Nathan Yerian
Will 2012 be better for your business than 2011? This is the question that marketers everywhere are trying to answer with a firm "hell yes". It will not happen by accident though. To make this a reality, you must have a well thought out marketing plan in place.
This is the Part 1 of a 3 part series that will look at three areas of your marketing plan that could hold you back in 2012:
Your plan is not measurable - This is a big one. If your marketing initiatives are not able to be measured, how will you gauge success? Measurement is a tricky topic. You have to make sure that you are measuring the correct things and making continual improvements along the way.
The tendency is to measure only the end result (revenue). Measuring revenue is important, but you also need to measure the pieces that came together to make that revenue. Measuring other indicators will give you insight into which elements of your marketing mix are producing and which are not.
Plan to measure items that correlate to a sale. It could be things like social media mentions, backlinks generated by your blog posts, web traffic for keyword phases that you are targeting, and leads from you website. Try to determine the path that your potential customer takes before the transaction and decide what components can be measured. From there, you should be able to make meaningful goals that can be measured and improved.
Example
Let's say you want your online activity to generate 10 more sales per month. If you know that you get an average of 2000 website visitors per month and that results in 20 leads generated, and your closing rate is 50%, you are already closing 10 sales per month from your online marketing activities. In order to get 10 more closed, you will need 2000 more visitors per month (if everything else remains equal) to produce the result you want.
Once you decide on the marketing elements you will use, this will be where you start the measurement. You may decide that in order to get the additional 2000 monthly visitors you will have to write 4 additional blog posts for your blog, and 2 guest posts for other blogs per month.
Additionally you might have to share each post on your social media platforms 3 times each (depending on the platform). Now you have a starting point for measurement that can be worked through and adjusted until you reach your desired traffic, leads, and sales.
Obviously, is a micro example. The real components that would have to make up a plan to generate 2000 more visitors would depend on your industry and competition, but this gives you the general idea. Start at the small actionable items for measurement and work them all the way back to the goal (revenue). This way, you can see if one of the elements you put into place is not performing as you had hoped. Or, on the other hand if an element is performing much better than expected, it will give you the chance to dedicate more attention to that activity.
If 2012 is going to be better than 2011, you are going to have to do things better and smarter than you have done in the past. If you have made the mistake of not planning to measure and improve along the way, now is the time to fix it. With the new year, you have a new opportunity for your company to execute a marketing plan that blasts away the competition.
This is the Part 1 of a 3 part series that explores three areas of your marketing plan that could hold you back in 2012.
Read Part 2: Your Marketing Plan Must Include Your Website
Read Part 3: Don't Center Your Marketing Plan Around An Individual
