You can choose to implement a variety of marketing strategies that can help your business achieve its goals. However, the strategies you implement will depend on the results you are looking for. So, it’s important to know what those are. Here are the top 3 ways to make that happen most effectively.
Set Reasonable and Accurate Expectations
The first step is to manage everyone’s expectations, including your stakeholders, your team, and yourself. This will remove unwanted pressure and create space for experiments and iterations. If you planted a tree today, would you have a tree tomorrow? Take that approach when implementing your marketing plan, too. Building an audience, generating demand, and gaining momentum all take time. Results take time, especially when you consider that results come in the form of traffic, social shares, leads, sales conversations, webinar attendees, revenue, and more. Therefore, it’s up to you to figure out just how much time your results will likely take.
Secure Resources (Including Employees)
Who will be on your marketing implementation team? It’s important to think through who you will need to help with this effort. Sometimes, that will include employees at your company — such as members of your marketing department (if you have one), sales team or customer service department. Other times, that means bringing in an outsourced marketing partner or a number of vendors to help you. Either way, make sure you know who needs to be on your team to implement the effort. Also, look at what other resources you need. Are there tools, materials or education that you need to get started? If so, make sure you get those resources in place too.
Monitor Your Progress
Since a marketing implementation is a dynamic process, you need to monitor and track your progress regularly. Monitoring involves tracking your progress to see whether you are on pace to meet your next target in terms of time, resources and budget. You also have to monitor the consumer-end to understand which efforts are working with your audience and which are not. Monitoring allows you to be prepared to take steps for tackling any issue before they cause a problem. Set specific intervals and metrics for monitoring your progress and keep revising them too.
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