2018 April 05 Archive - EXEIdeas – Let's Your Mind Rock

Your business is doing well, and things are going smoothly. But there’s that slight falling off of new business. Is your marketing still reaching potential customers? Is it still converting them to customers?Or are you just holding steady, not falling behind, but not excelling either. Are your dreams of wild success staying just out of reach? Staying dreams and never quite materializing as reality?What’s the first step in making your business soar? Bringing on new customers. And what does that? Marketing. Take a look at your marketing and see if you need to make some changes. It might just take a new approach to make your dreams come true.Here are 5 ways to refresh your approach in marketing:1.) Analyze:You have a variety of marketing strategies already in place, print, media, direct, online. Measure their effectiveness. Make sure you can tell how much value each is providing. One measurement is conversions. With online marketing, this can be identifying steps visitors to your site take that turn them into potential customers.Filling out a survey or signing up for an email list can be considered a conversion, it doesn’t have to be an actual purchase or contract. Gather all the data you can, on all your campaigns.2.) Plan:You probably already have a marketing plan in place. Get it out and take a look at it. Does it still meet your goals, your direction, your market? If there are items where your plan and your situation are not aligned change the plan.You always want to have your plan be serving your goals. If it isn’t, you need to change it. If there’s a big discrepancy, you may need to scrap it entirely and start from scratch. But having a plan that points you in the wrong direction, is as bad as having no idea at all.3.) Evaluate:Put your plan and your analysis together and decide if what you are doing is fulfilling your plan. If the plan calls for a more mobile online presence and your efforts have been pushing for paper mailers, you need to evaluate the relative worth of your old activities against new ideas that will help make your plan happen. Here’s where you look at how much you get for what you invest, how much bang for your buck.This is also where you take that data you gathered and looked at what it means. Use the information to compare different strategies you’ve tried and how well they perform. This can inform you where you want to put your efforts and where you want to cruise or cut.4.) Improve:Once you’ve identified what is getting results, and what isn’t, it’s time to get to work making the bad stuff good, and the good stuff better. Look for ways to improve each of your marketing strategies, the ones you want to keep that is. Make sure you are always looking for ways to make your marketing more consistent, more effective, more engaging.If something is working, and working well, can a slight improvement bring even more business? Part of the previous evaluation step should be prioritizing these efforts. Make sure you aren’t dumping work on a strategy that will never be more than mediocre while ignoring an effective marketing campaign that could be made stellar.5.) Execute:As your new and improved materials and strategies become available, put them to work. Don’t delay, only if you are creating some coordinated marketing push using several strategies in concert should you wait. Push each of your shiny new campaigns out to do its work. And go back to the top and make sure you are collecting data on how well it is working for your next cycle.You shouldn’t wait for your approach to get stale, you should continuously refresh it as needed. Don’t tinker with one thing, and you will have plenty of channels. Start with one, work it through the steps and start on the next. Continuous improvement should be your goal.Remember being outstanding at something can be its own marketing. Take a look at the Audeze LCD 3 headphones. “… has been called the greatest headphone in the world.” What is it worth to you to have your company be the greatest in the world? And what can it mean regarding your ability to market your brand? Think of the best in class brands in various fields. Just their name converts customers.Keeping a fresh and critical outlook on your marketing can keep it from going stale. Always be gathering data, planning, evaluating, improving, and executing. The world isn’t standing still, and that change can leave you behind if you choose to stagnate. Keep your mind open, imagine better solutions, dream great dreams. Aren’t those big dreams the only ones worth having?Did you find this article helpful and informative? Leave us a comment with your thoughts in the section below.