how do you ensure your marketing remains effective?

I work with several brands at any one time. I establish long-term partnerships with my clients, contributing to their overarching vision, mission, and value proposition.

Over the years, some of my clients have faced a period of change:

• Their audience's needs changed.

• They needed to refresh their offering to meet a shift in market dynamics.

• Their business objectives rapidly changed from when they last set.

These changes all had a knock-on effect on Marketing. As a result, my clients needed direction and support to ensure their Marketing remained effective and continued to serve their audience and their business - particularly Sales.

If you find your business in a period of change you will undoubtedly need to adapt your approach to Marketing.

As a rule of thumb, you’ll want to ensure:

• your business aims and the "why" behind their operations align with Marketing’s output

• you know your target audience and what they need - especially if this differs from before as a result of the change

• your marketing campaigns and activities still cut the mustard given the changes.

Here’s a three-step approach to consider if you’re facing change in your business and you want to ensure your Marketing remains effective.

3 strategic steps to ensure your marketing remains effective

1. Strip everything back

From a Marketing perspective, consider your business objectives, what you do and why - strip everything back:

• What do you want to achieve?

• Why do you exist?

• What sets you apart from your competitors?

• What makes you unique?

If your business has rapidly changed its business aims or offering, then these questions need revisiting - the answers will be different from when you last set your marketing strategy.

2. Consider your audience

If your target audience and their needs have changed, or your offering has shifted, then think about who needs your service/product and why.

This is a fantastic, practical exercise (over Zoom or a face-to-face workshop) where you think about what personas your audience could adopt. Consider multiple personas depending on your offering:

• What is their background?

• What are their demographics?

• What do they need/want to achieve?

• What are their challenges?

You can then start to think and reflect on how you help them and how your service/product solves their challenges and/or presents them with what they’re looking for, why etc. Again, the answers you come up with may be very different to what you originally started with before the period of change.

3. Make your marketing count

Review your inbound marketing strategy - reflect on your themes, your personas, your campaigns and messaging.

Consider your content marketing strategy, your marketing channels and other ‘events’ happening within your organisation.

Review your roadmap so you bring everything together. Do your campaigns align with Sales’ focus and objectives? Is your marketing effective enough to support Sales and drive demand generation?

Facing a period of change? Is your Marketing in a funk? Do get in touch to see how I can help.