After months of work and a chunk of your bank account down the drain, you just aren’t sure that the marketing strategy you set up earlier this year is working like you thought it would. We’re already half way through the year, which means it’s about to be busy season for your industry (or normally, it would be, you think to yourself). You’ve created quite the digital presence for yourself, but something still just feels off. You’ve stuck to your previously created marketing strategy pretty strictly, but when you reexamine everything, different plans, tasks, and goals are all over the place. You start to think that there is no way that all of these stars could align and bring in the revenue you need to make next year’s marketing budget even an approachable conversation to your boss.
Enter: InnoVationV. We do this for a living so you don’t have to! Let’s take a moment to learn how to measure the effectiveness of your marketing strategy, what you should expect from a digital marketing agency in Augusta, Ga, and what to do when you feel like you’ve come to a roadblock with your marketing.
What Defines a Great Marketing Strategy?
Before you know if your strategy is working or not, you should know what defines a great marketing strategy. Firstly, you need to have a goal. What are you working towards? Is it getting more customers on a monthly basis, growing your online presence, or reducing costs? You can have multiple goals, but sometimes, it’s best to break them up into smaller, more digestible (and realistic) chunks.
Once you have your goal in place, you can set a clear budget. You want to make sure that you have enough set aside to give your marketing strategy time to work. You also want to make sure that your budget is in line with your goals. You can’t expect to fly to the top of search engines and get high-quality leads from ads with a nervous budget!
Now that you’re almost done building your strategy, take notes! More specifically, write down your business data where you are right now. How much money is coming in, how much is coming out, how much are you spending on marketing, etc. This way, 6-12 months down the road, you’ll be able to see how things are going and readjust accordingly.
Not sure what your digital marketing goals should be at the moment as a business in Augusta, Georgia? Can’t keep up with your goals, budget, data, or all of the in-betweens while running the rest of your business? We understand. That’s why we’re here!
How to Know When Your Marketing Strategy Isn’t Working
Say you’ve followed all of the steps above but something still feels wrong. How do you know when your current marketing strategy just isn’t working?
Look At Your Sales Data
Let’s take this part step by step. First, take a look at your sales in the months before the marketing strategy began and compare them to now. This will help you see if your sales have improved slightly and you just haven’t really noticed, or if your sales decreased or even stayed the same. Depending on what you find, you might need to readjust some things.
Dissect Marketing Analytics
This is really where a digital marketing agency can come in handy. If you are winging a marketing strategy on your own, you likely won’t be able to effectively track how your online visibility has changed. For example, we use tools and tracking software that safely crawl through your website while simultaneously crawling search engines to compare search rankings, user behavior, and more. We use trends that we find to your advantage by going through your site and adding new keywords, images, buttons, etc.
Change in Business Structure
This step sort of goes hand-in-hand with looking at your sales data. If you aren’t bringing in enough revenue to keep up with your marketing strategy plus other business factors, you may find yourself having to restructure your business. Layoffs, working longer hours, and stretching yourself thin overall isn’t worth it to continue with marketing that isn’t working!
What Success Actually Looks Like
Now, what does success with marketing really look like? It isn’t just more likes and follows on social media… As the Harvard Business School puts it, there are three key factors to consider at any given moment during your marketing strategy; awareness, consideration, and decision. Think of things from your ideal customer’s perspective.
Awareness
What does your brand awareness look like? Do they only think of you when they run across you (like when they finally find your business card that’s been lost for months) or does your marketing strategy give you no other choice than to stay top of mind? Think of brands like Nike or Coca-Cola. Their marketing is done so well that you’d recognize the signature checkmark or that “Coca-Cola red” nearly anywhere.
Consideration
People may be aware of your brand, but do they consider you when weighing their options? What kind of perception does your brand give off? Did you know that you can measure this through ad campaigns? More on that later!
Decision
The last factor to consider in a successful marketing strategy is decision. People consistently think about so many brands and companies all day long but decide to buy items or services from you. Give them a reason to remember you by offering solutions to their biggest day-to-day problems!
Keeping Patient With Your Marketing Timeline
A good marketing strategy should provide you with some clear short-term results and long-term results. However, you have to be patient. As described above, there are so many things that go into a marketing campaign. It isn’t all just budget and data charts, its branding, how you present your message, how you present yourself as a business to the public, and even more.
Your short term results are what you will see within a few months to even the first year of implementing your strongly built strategy. The algorithms of the internet are everchanging and you have to play along with them! People go through seasons of searching things one way and then turning around to search the same things differently. You have to adjust with them.
Do You Need Digital Marketing Assistance Near Augusta, Georgia?
The best way to stay on track is to utilize your resources, AKA, InnoVationV! As a digital marketing agency based in Augusta, Ga, we have served countless industries across the nation with improving their online visibility (SEO), ramping up their Google and Meta ad performance and results, and much more. We believe that we stand out from our local competition because, with us, you’ll actually know what services you’re getting. We value ethics and transparency and are continuously working to improve how we can show up for you.
If you are ready to say goodbye to tire-kicker customers and half built marketing campaigns and hello to a smoother workday, more return on investment, and on-demand reporting software, give us a call!