Making those 2018 marketing resolutions

Logan Wedgwood lends a helping hand to business owners who still haven’t written their New Year resolutions on marketing.

We’ve waved goodbye to a year that many would eloquently describe as “challenging.” 

2017 was an interesting year, thanks to a change in government, a slowing economy and a general feeling of uncertainty amongst consumers and businesspeople.  

The bad news is that 2018 is set to be just as turbulent. 

However, the good news is I have written your New Year’s resolutions if you want your business to be a winner in 2018!

So sit back, relax and enjoy the beach, sun and too much food, because you can start the year knowing you have your marketing under control.

How? 

By establishing the marketing activities you are going to start, stop, and keep doing!

Start!

Start talking about why you do what you do. So often we’re focused on singing the song that surrounds what we do, as opposed to sharing enough externally about why we do it. Continue doing this at your peril.

Customers in 2018 are going to be even more focused on choosing to do business with people and they’re going to be looking to connect meaning to these interactions. 

As robots continue to fill the void of menial tasks and value-less customer interactions, people are going to be even more desperate to speak with a real human – a human who has taken the time to understand them and their business. 

They want a relationship, but it needs to be meaningful. Make sure all of your communications are targeted, well-written and focused on connecting readers with why your business or brand exists.

Stop!

Please stop throwing money at marketing campaigns that you aren’t measuring. If you can’t measure its impact, you simply can’t justify spending money on it. 

As Rear Admiral Grace Hopper once said: “One accurate measurement is worth a thousand expert opinions.” I couldn’t agree more. 

So where do you start?

There are three key things to measure:

1. The number of new leads generated (as a result of that channel or activity).

2. The length of time to conversion (from first contact to closing a sale).

3. The conversion rate (aka hit rate, strike rate, close rate).

Marketing performance management is the systematic management of marketing processes to gain a return on investment while maintaining quality in customer experience. 

If the three key measurements above are making for eye-watering reading, you may need to check your customer experience and make some adjustments.

Keep!

Keep investing in your marketing. You can’t shrink your way to greatness.

If the results aren’t coming, it might be something really simple that you’re getting wrong. 

Seek out experts, ask for advice and speak with other business owners about what’s working well for them. 

There is no such thing as a silver bullet when it comes to marketing. It takes testing, measuring and refining your activity to land on campaigns that work. But it’s worth the effort involved in keeping trying and continuing to innovate. 

After all, your success in 2018 depends on it.

Running low on inspiration?

Here are three simple questions you can ask yourself, and your team, to stimulate some ideas around marketing in 2018:

1. What could we do to surprise and delight our existing customers?

2. What can we give a new prospect that will inspire them?

3. If we were to throw away our business and start again with a single goal of disrupting the market – what would we do?

Logan Wedgwood is an Auckland-based management consultant specialising in marketing and sales.