Execute and Optimize to Drive Marketing Results
You've completed your strategy and planning. While strategy is critical to success, strategy without execution is just theory. Now it's time to execute and optimize to drive your marketing results to the next level. This is where "the rubber hits the road".
Keys to Successful Marketing Execution and Optimization
1. Plan Out a Year.
You should map out a year’s worth of projects, campaigns and processes and break each month into a theme, and each project into weekly action steps. Each action should be assigned to a single person to be responsible for completing.
- Annual Marketing Plan
- Rolling 12-month plan
- Quarterly Key Focus Areas
- Monthly Themes
- Weekly action items
- WikiHow: Create a Marketing Calendar
2. Review progress regularly.
On a monthly basis make sure that you remain on track. On a quarterly basis, review your progress and revisit what's working and what isn't. Determine if you need to make any course adjustments.
Track performance of key marketing metrics, including:
- Marketing budget - actual vs forecast
- Marketing campaign performance - budget vs actual, projected results budget vs actual
- Marketing tactical performance - website traffic, search engine rankings, number of email subscribers, emails sent, emails opened, click through rates, conversion rates, number of booked appointments, number of proposals or pricing quotes submitted
- Volume of Leads Generated and Cost Per Lead (CPL)
- Sales - revenues, by product/service, by customer or segment
- Marketing costs per sale made, aka Cost Per Acquisition
- Marketing ROI - marketing costs versus incremental profit generated
- Key Marketing Metrics Every Marketer Should Measure
- Content Marketing Metrics
- Marketing Dashboards for Visualizing Performance
3. Create Efficiencies.
Once your system is in place, make your processes repeatable. Standardizing these processes and turning them into templates will help your team execute effectively and efficiently every time, no matter who’s driving the work. Save time, reduce effort, and reduce mistakes or rework by ensuring that the right steps and checks are performed in the right order.
- Definition: Repeatable Process
- Implement Scalable Repeatable Processes
- Use Procedure Checklists for Flawless Execution
4. Optimize.
Optimization is the difference between a marketing program that is effective, and one that is outstanding. To truly drive performance track results from you marketing activities through each step of your campaigns. Starting at the weakest performing point, begin to test and monitor different creatives and different approaches. Monitor results, and stop weak performers, and continually optimize the winners. Repeat this process regularly.
Lastly, Create a Continous Cycle for Ongoing Success
It can be very easy to let your plans to execute and optimize fall to the side. You have a critcal client deliverable that requires all hands on deck, a flu epidemic leaves half your staff bedridden or something else comes along and you just don't get to the marketing. This is where you need to ensure that you've built the discipline within your firm to execute, to monitor results, to adjust plans and optimize. Turn execution into a habit, and make it a continous part of your business operations.
MORE INFORMATION: Implementing an ongoing system for marketing execution can be time and resource consuming. We provide everything from coaching to guide you through the process and make sure you stay on track to fully managed marketing execution programs where we take care of all of the elements of implementation for you.
Get started now on the path to success.