Article

Paul Gordon
Paul Gordon 17 February 2020

5 Simple Steps to Review your Marketing Strategy

A marketing strategy is a flexible, moving thing that constantly changes and evolves based on the data you receive. Small changes and tweaks are often made at random times but there’s another component you need to add to your schedule – the marketing strategy review. But what is this, when should you do it and what steps should include in it?

A marketing strategy is a flexible, moving thing that constantly changes and evolves based on the data you receive.  Small changes and tweaks are often made at random times, but there’s another component you need to add to your schedule – the marketing strategy review. But what is this, when should you do it, and what steps should include in it?

Overview of a review

There’s no right or wrong time for a strategy review but, as shown in this post, January or February is often a popular time for it.  The key is to create a schedule and stick to it, whether it is an annual, quarterly or even monthly review.

What you do want to incorporate is all of your marketing activities.  This might include PPC advertising, organic social media, SEO or any other components you use or have used within the time frame.  This helps to get a clear picture of what has worked, what hasn’t, and where you go forward.

5 steps to reviewing your strategy

Step 1 – look at the Big Picture

The first step in the review is to carry out a high-level review of what is happening with the company, with the marketing you are doing and the industry overall.  If there have been changes to core things such as mission, vision, values or objectives since the last review, then this is the time to think about how this will impact things going forward.

Also, look if there has been any disruption to your industry that could play a part in what you do going forward.  This could be new technology, politics, environment or even a new competitor offering a new pricing model that has had a significant impact.

Step 2 – look at your plan

After looking at your big picture, the high-level view of the company, it is next important to look at the marketing plan itself.  There are three core elements to consider when doing this:

1. Objectives – these are high-level organisation goals, and they need to be assessed to see if they are still relevant and relate to core things like mission, values or vision using the data on hand. 

2. Measures – also known as key performance indicators or KPIs, these are how you measure objectives but are they getting the information needed?  And what do they show?

3. Initiatives – these are big picture, long term projects that you are working towards that the marketing is contributing but have there been changes?  Has an initiative altered, or a time frame changed?

Step 3 – Review your media

Media is the assets and things that you use in the marketing plan to fulfil goals and objectives.  There are three main types: owned, earned and paid.

Owned media is things that are yours such as a website, email list or a blog.  These are the ones you have complete control over and have a great range of information about.

Earned media includes things like a social media profile because you don’t own this, you have earned a following on it by providing useful information as part of your marketing strategy. 

Paid media is things like paid ads, PPC, Facebook ads, Pinterest promoted pins and other types of paid advertising.

Step 4 – review all reports

Once you have sorted all of the media assets owned, you can review the various reports available from them to see what specific information each provides.  This can be compared to previous reports or help to support how progress to a specific objective has progressed.

Step 5 – update the plan

Having conducted all the assessments and checks required, you can update the plan where needed.  It may be that there are no real changes and things are working well, but at least you can show you have checked.  Then keep the process to hand for the next time the review is due.

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