Marketing List

By Cheryl Salazar, The Partner Marketing Group

Do you have a marketing list? We all know that if we go to the mall or the grocery store without a list we come home with delightful treats, unexpected items and stuff we really didn’t need in the first place … and it cost us much much more than we ever thought we’d spend. The same applies to many aspects of our lives – without a goal and knowing what we want to achieve, we stumble about without any real direction. Would you run your business this way? Probably not!

You most likely do have a marketing plan in place – and if you don’t, that should be right at the top of your New Year’s Resolution list! Without a sound plan, how do you know that the activities you are doing are worthwhile?  How would you even know what you did last year, how successful it was and whether or not you should repeat it?  Here are some tips on how to get started:

5 Items to Have on Your Marketing List

1. Metrics – an important element of setting a marketing direction is figuring out your metrics. How much revenue do you need to transact, how many new customer adds you need by the end of the year, how many impressions/prospects you need to touch – back out those numbers and then associate a budget number with it.

2. Focus areas – a good marketing plan focuses only on those areas that bring you success. If it wasn’t successful last year, it needs to come off your list.

• If all you desire is ‘trickle in leads’, then you may rely solely on stellar social media execution. By utilizing tools such as Social Butterfly, you can automate your social media through reusing content already pre-populated or use your own original entries. Schedule your posts regularly and then focus on executing the other elements of your plan.

• If you rely more heavily on hosting regular in-person events, encouraging clients and prospects to mingle in your office environment, schedule your conference rooms and publish your quarterly calendar on your website. Automate this process by allowing interested prospects to register and receive a confirmation email. Keep track of them by using marketing automation.
• Continue to update your website and tweak your keywords. You shouldn’t just focus on keeping search engines happy. Search engines don’t buy software, people do. Make sure that the content you do post is geared towards the audience you want to reach. Make sure old downloads are removed, urls are refreshed, pictures are redone and contact information is still relevant.

3. Marketing Automation technology – it’s important that you know who your hottest prospects are and provide them information that helps sales synch the deal. Marketing is playing an increasingly important role in the sales cycle and assuming more responsibility for it than before. Prospects tend to be much further down the sales cycle before initial contact by your organization is made. Marketing controls how the conversation with the prospect is happening – via email, via the website, YouTube videos, via blogging environments. Having good insight into what that prospect is doing and providing them the right types of content at the right time will turn them into a customer. If you don’t have a marketing automation tool, start shopping now!

4. Content Publishing – as important as it is to control the virtual conversation with your prospective customer is the provision of timely and relevant content.  From e-mails to whitepapers, infographics to video, regular refreshed content is key. Keep your website refreshed and up to date and always remember –  the prospect is in control of the marketing messages they receive and the content they consume. Stay relevant, stay fresh and focus on the benefits.

5. Stay organized – using a calendar of some sort helps you keep your marketing activities organized. Whether you rely on Microsoft Outlook or a good old Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, or the proverbial whiteboard, having your activities laid out and planned allows you to change up your cadence, remove ineffective activities, and reminds you to stay on task.

Need Help With Marketing

Remember, if you find yourself falling off the wagon with regard to your marketing New Year’s resolution, the Partner Marketing Group has got your back. Give us a call and we’ll help keep you on track. Happy New Year and here’s to a stellar marketing year!