How Often Should You Review Your Marketing?

A couple of years ago, while I was writing the section of my book, Magnetic Marketing, that talks about scheduling your marketing, I realised that I needed to take a leaf out of my own book. At Appletree, while we had a Marketing Strategy, we didn’t have a plan that showed us exactly what marketing we should be doing on a regular basis. Page 63 of the book shows a simple way to schedule your marketing and from it, I created a version on flip charts that I stuck to the wall of the office. Every time we reach the end of one flip chart, we take it down and add the next few months. Our current Marketing Plan runs up to the end of November.Last year, however, we realised that just having the schedule on the wall wasn?t enough. We needed to review our Marketing on a monthly basis, to check what was working and to bounce around a few new ideas. Now we meet once a month, to do this. To make the sessions even more productive, we meet in one of our local pubs! We tried having the discussion at our meeting table in the office, but we were too easily distracted by phones ringing and other things going on. Taking the team out of the office is not only a nice treat (we always have lunch while we’re there) but it seems to make the ideas flow more easily.

Our August meeting was a particularly lively affair. The ideas we talked about included our forthcoming 13th Birthday Party and what food to order for our clients and colleagues who will be joining us. Another idea we discussed was carrying out a client satisfaction survey. It’s not safe to assume that just because they don?t complain that your clients are happy. It usually takes being asked if they’re happy to encourage them to tell you what’s wrong, or what they’d like you to do differently or better. It’s always scary asking clients what they think of you; and it’s a great way of improving your business and your relationships with your clients.joining us. (Send your requests with your RSVP!) We also planned our blog topics all the way through to the middle of October. Our new Account Manager and our Apprentice are both going to start writing every couple of weeks, so we looked at marketing topics that they can write about. When you know what you’re going to write, it means you can integrate your blogs with your newsletters, the events you’re speaking at and all your other marketing activities. It also makes it much easier to start writing from a blank page!

Google+, LinkedIn profile reviews, newsletter open rates and keyword research were also all covered at the August meeting. We usually start by working on the issues for our business and then we look at how best to use them to help our clients with their marketing.

After each meeting, we take the topics and ideas we’ve decided on and put them all onto our Marketing Plan on the wall of the office, to make sure we keep doing what needs to be done. It means we can measure our marketing and keep doing it; and we can get lots done before our next monthly meeting.

How often do you review your marketing?