Ongoing evaluation of your marketing strategy is essential for keeping it fresh and in step with changing market needs.

You may have a great strategy, but things change. New innovations come onto the market and customer demands shift.

So, regular evaluation is vital to the health and success of your marketing strategy, no matter what your sector.

Read on for our guide on why evaluation is important and what it looks like in practice.

1. Regular evaluation of your marketing strategy prevents stagnation
2. What to include in an evaluation of your marketing strategy
3. Bringing all the pieces of evaluation together
4. Marketing planning pitfalls to avoid
5. Evaluating your marketing strategy versus hoping for the best

Regular Evaluation of Your Marketing Strategy Prevents Stagnation

If you’ve ever worked somewhere with a ‘we’ve always done it this way’ attitude it can be really frustrating.

Put that approach into a marketing situation and you’ve got a sure-fire way to stagnate a business. Things may generally go well but the business never really grows beyond a certain point.

Sometimes the most well-meaning people who want a business to grow are the ones holding it back.

But it’s not always as clear cut as laying the blame at one person’s feet.

Even in thriving and forward-thinking businesses, stagnation and ruts can creep up bit by bit over time. Successful new strategies gradually become ingrained habits.

This is where a thorough and regular analysis and evaluation of your marketing strategy needs to come in. And not as a one-time activity, but as a continuous process. Then you will know how to adapt your tactics to the changing needs and expectations of your target audience.

Evaluating your marketing strategy will help you discover what’s working well, what isn’t and why. But there are several types of evaluation that need to come together for this to work well.

What to Include in an Evaluation of Your Marketing Strategy

Integrating the following types of evaluation into your marketing strategy will provide you with an analysis of the success of your current strategy.

KPIs

Decide upon KPIs that align with your business objectives. Setting KPIs and sticking to them provides a benchmark for evaluating how effective your marketing strategy is over time.

Digital Data Evaluation

Using data analytics to track the performance of digital marketing campaigns is an evidence-based approach to evaluation. Over time, patterns and areas for improvement become clear, helping to direct future steps. Use tools like Whatagraph, Google Analytics and Zoho Analytics when evaluating your marketing efforts.

Competitor Analysis

Conduct frequent analyses of your competitors’ marketing strategies. Identifying their areas of weakness will help highlight opportunities where you can gain a competitive advantage.

Content Performance Analysis

This is not as clear cut as digital marketing analytics, since content marketing includes activities with less traceable results that focus on awareness and brand building. But some areas can be quantified including readerships and engagement with online content. Identifying which types of content resonate most with your target audience using data and non-data driven metrics will help guide your strategy over time.

Sales and Marketing Alignment

Analysing the alignment between your sales and marketing teams is massively important. Ultimately, success largely rests on these two departments working effectively together. A good place to start is to first identify any gaps in communication and then develop strategies to improve alignment on your KPIs.

Financial Evaluation

Evaluation of your sales data can help you determine which marketing strategies are generating the most revenue. So it will help clarify where you should focus your efforts once you have primed your audience to purchase.

Customer Feedback Analysis

It’s sometimes overlooked during the evaluation of a marketing strategy, but seeking and acting upon customer feedback is really important. It’s another way of assessing what’s working well so you can target your marketing accordingly. It also helps you to gauge brand sentiment as by speaking to customers directly you can better assess their feelings towards your brand.

Bringing All the Pieces of Evaluation Together

All the insights gained from these different evaluations need to be brought together. And looking at the direction of everything as a whole will help you make evidence-based decisions.

Then you can start to experiment with new tactics, channels, and messaging based on your findings. Regularly adjusting your marketing plan in this way will mean that your business remains responsive to changing demand.

Continuing professional development at a personal and team level is also key. Make sure you remain up to date with training so you can take advantage of the latest techniques going forward.

Marketing Planning Pitfalls to Avoid

Allott and Associates has evaluated thousands of marketing strategies for clients and prospects. And over the years we’ve identified the following common mistakes companies make when evaluating their marketing strategies.

Always Using the Same Tactics

A certain approach may have worked brilliantly for several mailing campaigns for example. It doesn’t mean it always will! Switching things up is more likely to keep prospects interested and engaged in the long run.

Changing for Change’s Sake

On the other hand, if ongoing evaluation shows a particular approach is working well, don’t change it. If you want to freshen things up, more superficial changes like design are probably the answer here. Just remember, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!

Being a Catch All Marketer

It’s can be tempting, particularly in the early days of a business to market to everyone you possibly can. But being a specialist rather than a catch all can be a strong USP. This is especially true if you’re filling a niche gap in the market. Focus on marketing exactly what you’re an expert on for the best results.

Churn and Burn

‘Churn and burn’ is where you have a high number of clients coming and going all the time. A high churn rate indicates that customers are not satisfied and are probably switching to a competitor. This is likely to be a problem if you’re trying to do everything for everyone. The best response is to:

• Focus on a specific need.
• Act upon customer feedback.

Evaluation Your Marketing Strategy Versus Hoping for The Best

The evaluation of your marketing strategy will help you prevent stagnation and use proven techniques, giving you a competitive advantage.

Adaptability is important to keep any business resilient. But if you don’t have an evidence base to show you what to change, how do you go forward? It’s either a stab in the dark, or an idea that hopes for the best.

If you know you need to make a change but would like some support and expert advice, contact Allotts.

We can provide guidance and strategy based on 30 years’ experience in diverse sectors around the world.

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