01 Nov The 10th Step Of Marketing : Evaluating Marketing Campaigns
By: Julie Goode
We are almost at the end of our monthly themes to help you create a marketing plan. We’ve dedicated each month this year to a different topic. This month’s will be somewhat similar to August (reviewing marketing campaigns) but we’re going to focus more on evaluating and making those difficult decisions…
Keep reading as we cover this month’s topic: evaluating marketing campaigns. And, as always, feel free to message us with any questions you may have!
Review Website Hits
This data provides valuable insights into your business. Analyze how users navigate your website and how that translates to sales. By doing so, you can better understand how your website is communicating with your audience.
As you view your website hits, you can use this information to adapt a new marketing strategy!
What Worked?
It is important to evaluate the successes and failures of your marketing campaign.
Ask yourself what worked in your campaign. This will help with important decisions about what you should continue throughout your next campaign, and allow you to cease what didn’t work.
In-Person Vs. Virtual
Service-based companies, this tip is for you! When evaluating your marketing campaigns, consider whether you should try offering your services in-person or virtually.
Here at Germono Advertising Company, we host a social media workshop called Lattes and Laptops. We have hosted these in person and had a lot of success. But as the times changed (pandemic) and people became more comfortable with attending events virtually, we continued our workshop via Zoom. To this day, our workshop has morphed and migrated into something different that what originally planned but we wouldn’t have known unless we tried it different ways!
Review Relationships That Didn’t Work
While you evaluate your marketing campaigns, it’s important to review relationships with other firms, vendors, and collaborators. Ask yourself why the relationship didn’t work and use that as you build better contacts in the future.
Add New Relationships
Adding new relationships for the next year is a great marketing strategy as it allows you and another brand to expand your brand’s audience.
In May, we discussed the importance of collaborations in marketing campaigns. You can check out our previous blog post where we summarize tips for creating partnerships here: https://germono.com/collaborations/
Evaluate Campaign Goals
You’ll definitely want to do this if you don’t reach your goals. It enables you to shift to a new strategy and keep moving forward. On the other hand, if you do reach your goals it’s time to focus on setting new ones!
Close Facebook Groups or Forums
Do you have any inactive Facebook groups or forums? Perhaps it’s best to close them down. But before you do, create a post directing your audience to your main business profile, email list, or where to connect with you. This ensures that you don’t lose any of those precious connections.
Bonus tip: you have to remove each member of a Facebook group one by one before deleting the group
In-Person Networking
When evaluating your marketing campaign, ask yourself: Could any of these campaigns be more successful if we attended in-person networking events?
List pro’s and cons of networking events
Pros:
+meet new people
+get your company name out there
+support local businesses
Cons:
-time-consuming if you already have a hectic schedule
-finding the RIGHT networking group for your business can take time
-some groups have a fee associated with joining (not necessarily a bad thing, these groups have hard costs associated with them… you just need to budget that fee into your plan)
Hidden Costs
As you evaluate your marketing campaigns, don’t forget to review the hidden costs. What did it take to initiate and proceed with the campaign (output) and are there any other hidden costs to consider.
-How much extra time did your staff dedicate to setting up events?
-Did you ask anyone to step away from their day-to-day responsibilities to help with campaigns?
-If so, what did the backup of tasks look like for that person?
We found a really great article by The Common Library that discusses the importance of understanding the difference between outputs and outcomes.
Check it out: https://commonslibrary.org/campaign-monitoring-and-evaluation-measuring-what-matters/
If you have any questions, email us at info@germono.com, follow us on social media as well! We post in-depth videos and explain how to use social media platforms to grow your business.
