5 New Year’s Resolutions for the Marketer

By Brien O’Brien

The hangover is gone, holiday decorations put away and you are sitting at your desk staring at your computer. It must be the New Year! It is tempting to just pick up where you left off last year – but if you want to have a super year think about making some New Year’s Resolutions. Here are five Marketing goals to kick start your year.

1. Clean off the desk, your computer and your mind– get rid of the old calendars, collateral material, project lists and papers that are now dated. Keep one copy in a file for future reference. Update binders and bulletin boards with the new data. Clean out your email inbox. Look at each email before you file or delete it. Sometimes you find one that was once a great idea long forgotten.  Create new digital files and organize your computer.  Start fresh, take a deep breath and clear your mind of 2014. Focus on new beginnings and what a great year it will be.  Your greatest successes always begin in your attitude.
2. Review and update your lists and database.  Good lists are the key to successful marketing efforts and maintaining the lists is one of our biggest challenges.  Enlist the help of sales and other departments to make sure all current information is in the system.  Make it a monthly goal to review and update your data.
3. Meet with the sales department.  In this age of LeadGen, more sales responsibilities are moving to marketing such as lead qualification, inside sales and telemarketing.  Find out what the sales team needs to do their job better.  Review with them their target customer for each product line, what marketing tools would assist them best and their sales goals for the year.  After all, the result of a successful marketing campaign is increased sales.  Make sure you are on the same page with the revenue producers.
4. Create specific marketing objectives for each quarter and the year.  After getting input from sales you will be able to set specific goals for marketing campaigns.  They should be measurable and have time specific deadlines.  LeadGen campaigns should include the exact number of leads to be developed, the demographics and deadlines.  Branding goals should be measured before and after the campaign through benchmarking studies.  Digital advertising, content marketing and thought leadership programs as well as events should all have their own measurable goals.  Develop an ROI or ROM (return on marketing) equation that will help you measure the results of your efforts and allow you to constantly monitor the success of your programs.  Quarterly reviews will allow you to change course and make revisions to the plan to better meet your objectives.
5. Commit to a fully integrated marketing strategy.  We often find ourselves short on time and resources and we revert to a piece by piece strategy rather than an entire plan.  Regardless of your budget, an integrated strategy will help you achieve your goals faster with less money.  Make sure your message is consistent across all platforms – where print enhances banner ads, content and events generate leads and social media, mobile strategies and direct mail (which is making a comeback, by the way) get your targeted message in to the right hands.  Maintenance Technology can help you with integrated programs with our bundled incentive pricing.