3 Ways to Keep Your Marketing Fresh
Not everything in business needs a constant refresh. In Finance, if you’re following the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), you’re probably doing okay. But in Marketing, sticking with what has worked in the past can lead to failure in the future. With the hundreds of marketing messages consumers are exposed to each day, even relevant and targeted communication gets lost in the clutter if it can’t grab people’s attention.
Below are three ways to help ensure your marketing campaigns remain fresh.
Self-reflect: Analyze what worked and what didn’t
Marketing campaign analysis is nothing new; however, too often, analysis is used as a means of validation rather than a measure of which programs truly perform best. Instead of measuring your campaigns against industry benchmarks or metrics outlined in a campaign brief, measure them against each other.
For this exercise, a simple measure of call-to-action conversion is a good start. Once you’ve graded each campaign by conversion rate, compare the various campaign components against one another. For example, how does one channel compare to another? When promoting similar content, do whitepapers outperform webinars? And what about the content? Are there topics that have failed miserably no matter what the channel?
It’s like a magic eye poster. After spending some time focusing on the campaigns that have worked, similarities should jump out to you that weren’t visible at first glance. Then give your eyes and brain a quick break before focusing on the least successful campaigns.
Think like a customer: Keep track of messages that speak to you (as well as those that don’t)
This suggestion takes less effort than the first. It involves simply keeping your eyes open and taking a moment to tag content. One way to do this is by using the ‘Categories’ feature in your Outlook email. Category examples might include: Event/webinar invitations, thought-leadership and sales prospecting. Additionally, you can tag each piece with a secondary category of ‘good’ or ‘bad’.
In his new book, Launch, Michael Stelzner of Social Media Examiner talks about creating an ‘Idea Vault’ to store content that inspires you. Though I’ve been doing this on my own for some time, I love the idea of calling it an idea vault. It suggests the information is important and should be treasured. In addition to categorizing emails, I find Evernote is an excellent tool for capturing, tagging and accessing information. (Tip: To capture the offline world digitally, snap a photo and upload to Evernote).
Of course, if you aren’t consuming enough content, your idea vault will be empty. Finding great content can be as simple as searching for a few select keywords and registering to download content provided in the search results. Your content resources should include partners/companies in related industries, competitors, online publications and blogs. And if you’re hesitant to sign up for all this content for fear of being spammed, just think of it as research.
Hone in on a hero: Find a company that’s doing it right and follow their lead
This next tip is related to the last, but with a more focused approach. Take a look back at your tagged content and find the company that most often appears in your ‘good’ category. What are they doing differently from other content creators including yourself? Make sure to visit the company website often, follow then on social networks and register to receive regular content updates.
Track your ‘hero’ company’s marketing activity over time. Do you notice any trends? Have they begun to employ new strategies? If so, consider if you should embrace these same strategies. Just be careful not to blindly anyone without contemplating if it’s the right move for you. After all, the company with the freshest marketing strategy today can be stale tomorrow.
