Famed inventor Alexander Graham Bell once said, “Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.”

He was exactly right. Documenting your future marketing strategies is about preparing to grow and scale your business. Studies show companies that document their strategies are 538% more likely to claim success than those businesses who don’t.” Thankfully, Model B is a team that believes in developing strategies.

Data

Perhaps the most valuable aspect of any good strategy is data. Data provides a great deal of insight on the identification of target audiences, how brands should approach these audiences, and what trends among key audience members are driving the marketing industry forward. And a good source of data can be pulled via the analytics from your website. One of the most popular tools out there to collect data from is Google Analytics. Google Analytics provides valuable information about website visitors, including their demographic info, behavior, and engagement activity.

Let’s say hypothetically you’re a financial planning firm. Google Analytics might show that you had 3,500 site visits in the past 30 days, and that 40% of those visitors accessed your site from mobile devices. Google Analytics may also reveal that visitors using phones are 30% more likely to contact you.

How would this knowledge benefit you as this financial planning firm? The data shows the importance of optimizing your site for mobile users and voice search. You would want to include a mobile site audit for your website as part of your marketing strategy for scaling your business. An audit would indicate whether you have the correct autofill options in place, if pages are accessible and compliant, and if keywords on your site are terms your target audiences are searching for via typed entries or voice searches.

Setting S.M.A.R.T. Goals

Marketers are 429% more likely to report success when they set goals. That’s a statistic that is reflective of our own expert opinion on the importance of developing meaningful objectives and goals when creating online strategies. Goals help prevent you from wasting money on web products and advertising campaigns, and hold your marketing efforts accountable.

Every marketing plan should include S.M.A.R.T. goals (goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely). This framework allows you to think about the stages of a business relationship and the factors most impactful on customer engagement. So when developing goals to access the success of your marketing efforts, you’ll want to ask the following questions:

• Is the goal specific and detailed?
• Can you track this goal? How will you measure it? How will you know when you’ve accomplished it?
• Is this goal realistically attainable?
• Will this goal help you reach your business goals? Is it relevant to your business?
• When do you want to achieve this goal? Set a time-frame.

And learn from the past. Any data you’ve collected from last year is instrumental in setting SMART goals for the coming year. As you weed through what’s important information, think about:

Reach –What is the data from last year showing you about your current reach? What successfully brought visitors to your site? Is it organic searches, social media platforms, or paid advertising? And what can you do to expand your influence?

• Once you have reached your customers, you need to keep them engaged. Can they find what they were looking for when they interact with your website? Does your site make for a friendly experience from a user journey perspective?

Call to actions should be clear and evident to site visitors for higher conversions. Also, look through data and determine what visitors are interacting with most often on your site.

• After you engage users, you need to convert them. What do you want them to do on your website? For example, do you want them to sign up for a newsletter, watch a video, download information, submit a contact form, or purchase something? Look and see where you have customers dropping off your site before completing your desired action.  Then ask if users are dropping off because of messaging, call to actions, or design flaws?
• Ultimately, you want to sustain a long-term relationship. How will you encourage site visitors to keep coming back? What type of content will you add to the site, and how often?  Data showing what your visitors engaged with previously will be a great indicator of what they are looking for, and will help you plan future content. Additionally, using social listening tools and keyword research, you can see what topics are currently popular among your audiences and what people are searching for in the moment.

For more information on how to rely on your past data to develop your marketing goals for future strategies, contact our Model B team. We’re experts with the toolkit, and love helping businesses win.