A new year is upon us which means that many people are making, and already breaking, new year’s resolutions.  In business, it is a great time to look at what worked over the last year and what didn’t.  Taking the time to adjust any marketing and communication goals will be critical to your 2022 success.

Evaluating communication tactics can be challenging for many businesses.  Normally, there are several channels that drive engagements that work in conjunction with each other.  Singling out individual channels to evaluate effectiveness outside of the context of the whole, may be a mistake.  So, how do you develop an evaluation strategy.

It all begins with your messaging.  Instead of looking at specific channels such as social media or newsletters, begin with what you want your message to be.  Your underlying message needs to be short and drive an emotion from your potential customer.  People purchase on emotion and then justify it later with logic.  The clearer your message, the easier the marketing.

Secondly, evaluating your audience.  While most businesses try to go wide with their marketing, it is actually wiser to narrow the scope. While there are always outliers, knowing exactly who uses your product or service is invaluable to developing a marketing and communication strategy.  It impacts everything from imagery to language.  The more specific you can be about your audience, the easier it becomes.  Does your message resonate with that audience?  How about the color or imagery?

Finally, know what channels are bringing engagement.  Many companies spread themselves so thin, trying to be everywhere.  While it is good to be a variety of places online, and there are many alternative reasons to be specific places, knowing what channels drive engagement is critical to add focus.  If the majority of your engagement is on LinkedIN as an example, make sure your energy is focused there.  This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be on Facebook as well.  However, you want to really focus your energy on what brings you engagement.

Once you have done an evaluation, it is time for changes and adjustments.  This includes looking at products and services.  The difficult part of evaluating a product or a service is knowing the real issue.  There are many products or services that a business sees a great addition to their line, however, when they look at sales, it is lackluster at best.  The question often times focuses on the specific product or service and should it be continued.

While it is good to look at a specific product or service and ask questions about sales, there also must be a discussion on how it was presented.  Many times, the product or service is good and something people may desire, however, the marketing of that product leaves a lot to be desired.  If people do not see how your product or service will improve their lives, they won’t take the time to even consider it.

At Operation Crusader, we focus on helping small businesses evaluate their marketing and communication strategies.  We look through all of the analytics to determine what works and what doesn’t and help put together strategies to increase engagement.  We provide a game plan to help your company grow.  If you need us to help implement that plan, we can do that as well.