For the past few weeks, I’ve been announcing the launch of new services on the site, starting with the brand fundamentals, followed by the content strategy; and now, having put those frameworks into place, I’m talking about bringing it all to life in your marketing activities.

We tend to dive straight into the marketing – running ads and competitions, sending out press releases, organising fancy photo shoots – while it really does help to get those strategic foundations in place before we get into the execution.

Sharpening the tools: Optimise your marketing strategy and plans across all touch points to ensure your efforts are working effectively towards your objectives

Sometimes you’ve been operating for a while, you’re active on a number of different platforms and you’ve been putting content out there, but you’re just not seeing the results you were hoping for, in terms of traffic to your site or conversion to sales (or both). Sound familiar?

Unfortunately we can’t just launch and leave these platforms. Effective marketing requires listening to your customers, tracking results, and optimising or sometimes even changing direction entirely when it’s clear that things aren’t working. Sharpening each tool in the toolbox is going to ensure that you continue to get the results that you want – and more!

So what does optimisation involve?

Let’s take a few examples of areas of your marketing that might need optimisation.

First, your website.

We’ve written a whole post on this one, but here are a few highlights:

• check your home page to make sure that there’s one clear message and action your customer is expected to take;
• make sure your navigation is simple and intuitive and your customer can find the information they need; and
• review your content to ensure that it is relevant and engaging for your target customer, regularly updated, and also technically optimised for search and mobile.

The website is often the core of your marketing eco-system and yet it’s also often abandoned once launched, with only parts of it updated with new product launches and other areas overlooked.

Second, your social media strategy and platforms.

Again, it can be easy to create social media profiles on all the major networks and then get busy posting away, soon losing sight of what the objective was and failing to react and respond when things change. Your community manager should be regularly reviewing your content and your results and looking at how you can make it work even harder for you. For example:

• is your branding up to date and consistent across all your platforms?
• which of your platforms is performing best, in terms of engagement, traffic, conversions?
• what kind of content is performing best and why? Can you create more of this type of content and de-prioritise other less effective content?

Reviewing your results regularly and optimising your activities as you go will ensure that you are using your budget and other resources effectively towards your objectives.

Of course, optimisation is important not just for your online platforms but for all your marketing activities – and having an objective expert come in and review those activities will help to pick up on things that your internal organisation is likely to miss.

Discover our new services to help you audit and optimise your marketing activities:

·       DIY coaching

If you’re an early-stage startup with limited time, money and manpower, then the DIY coaching solution is for you. After all, you’re the expert on your business! You’ll be in the driver’s seat, with an expert there to help you navigate the roads.

·       Workshop facilitation

If you have a larger team and want your key stakeholders to be involved in the process so that the team is fully leveraged and engaged, then the interactive workshop is the most effective solution. This can also be of value if you’re already an established business but are finding that you’re not getting the results you’re hoping for with your content marketing efforts. We’ll get together and share best practices, spend time on key exercises to draw out important insights, and pull it all together into a strong marketing plan that will guide your future activities.

·       Customised solution

Finally of course there is a fully customised, ‘done-for-you’ solution that we can develop to be tailored specifically to your situation and objectives.

Read more about our marketing optimisation solutions on the new service page >>

Or get in touch directly to discuss how we can support you and your goals >>