18 Dec Why January Is Your Time to Shine

Ah – a New Year is right around the corner but you may be feeling a bit overwhelmed at the moment trying to wrap up your current year. The end of December is often known for being the time that business executives and marketing directors often evaluate the services they’re using, what’s working and what they could be doing differently to improve the next year to come. Strategic planning is often at its peak right now.

So what does it mean for you if you’re currently in this phase? It can mean for a great opportunity to rediscover the areas that are working very well for your organization and make changes to efforts that aren’t giving you the best return on time, money or energy. When it comes down to marketing and public relations, there is a lot to be evaluated and sometimes this is a bit daunting. We’re here to give some tips to help you be on your way to continued success.

Here are the best ways to evaluate your marketing and public relations efforts:

Start looking at real metrics. You may have digital tools that can whip together reports and show numbers such as visits, impressions, reach and more. The biggest complaint we hear from executives before we help them is that they don’t truly know what the metrics mean and if they have real significance. You might be putting efforts into social media and get a reach of one thousand or one million; but does that really result in your bottom line? Was there more actual revenue for your organization? The best way to evaluate these sometimes tricky numbers is to have your real revenue numbers nearby when looking at your digital metrics. These two need to integrate together.

Reflect on real reasons for a change. What were your top three marketing successes last year? Can you pinpoint why they were so successful? Often times reflecting on the exact reason for success can be eye-opening. For example, perhaps your organization attends a conference every year with predictable results. This year, your group may have seen a spike in leads. This could be because of a factor involving the news, economy, or business climate. Having a thorough understanding of what caused specific changes will help in evaluating if, for example, you were thinking of increasing your participant level at such a conference in the future. The spike in leads may have been something to do with a recent news story pushing more of a need for your product or service and not have anything to do with the conference per se.

Look at what you really must do to make a difference next year. This might mean brand-new marketing materials or trying a service that is new in your experience. If you want to move the needle in terms of PR and marketing, this might mean taking a look at what new things must be done to add variety to your efforts. Perhaps your organization saw an increase of 15% growth last year, but what will you need to do to ensure you not only maintain that growth but continue to build upon it?

Look at a real budget. Making changes while evaluating services might send you on a path of wanting to do a lot more, but before you spend a ton of energy investing in exploratory calls and demonstrations, look at a real budget first. That means understanding what you will have in order to spend, and if you need to, what you will need to carve out of the budget to get to a new level. Having this in place before research makes things a lot cleaner and more efficient for you.

We hope these tips help in your evaluative energy. If you would like a free consultation and evaluation of your marketing and PR efforts, give us a call at (813) 865-3093.