It’s that time of year when clients are finalising budgets and we’re all working out working out how they can squeeze every last bit of ROI out of their marketing spend. Here are our top 5 tips to make sure you get bang for your buck from your marketing spend next year.
1.Listen to your customers
This might sound completely obvious but listening to your customers rather than making assumptions about their behavior can have a massive impact. We produce regular customer surveys for our clients about various aspects of their business, as well as general questionnaires to gain insight into what makes our customers tick. The social media plan we prepared for one client was far more successful than it would have been when we realised that our target audience were prolific users of a much lesser-used platform. Its also given us great insights for campaigns and content pieces. Surveys are generally quick and simple to produce and, if nothing else, we find that the higher ups love a presentation from the marketing department with some true voice of the customer feedback.
2. Listen to your customers, even when they are not talking to you…
By this, we mean use all of those wonderful analytics available to you to show you how the customer is really feeling or thinking. Where are they exiting your website? What are the most visited pages? What kind of content gets the best engagement? What email subject lines prompt the most opens? There are so many questions you can ask to give all kinds of insights. It probably sounds like Marketing 101, but it’s surprising how often all of this fantastic insight can be overlooked.
3. Don’t be afraid to change direction
A campaign has been approved, it’s part way through and the results are not what you hoped? It can be difficult to put the brakes on but there is no shame in changing messaging or channels, or any elements of the marketing mix if it’s not delivering. We would much rather make changes part way through a campaign than get to the end and realise that we’ve not quite delivered.
4. Don’t forget about traditional channels
With all of the amazing insight and instant gratification that digital channels can offer, more traditional methods of speaking to your customer can be overlooked. Our recent Northern Marketing Award was for an old school direct mail campaign, with a twist. The impact came from the direct mail piece but the true insight came from the emails, personal URLs and telemarketing that followed it up. A true marriage of online and offline.
5. GDPR is coming…
The marketing watchword of 2017; things will only get more intense in the early part of 2018 before the regulation comes into force at the end of May. It has to be considered as part of your strategy for next year, not least so that you have an audit trail that shows you are striving for compliance. We’re embracing GDPR with open arms and are seeing it as a positive change. If you’re still not au fait with what the changes will mean then we might be able to help. We’re producing a suite of materials about GDPR, including a Marketers Guide to what impact the changes are likely to have. Sign up for our newsletter below to be notified when the guide is available.
If you’re not sure that you’re getting ROI on your marketing spend, or would just like it to work that little bit harder, get in touch, we’d love to help.
