Kids are back in school, summer vacation is in the rear-view mirror, and it’s time to finish 2022 strong so you can hit the ground running in 2023. One big piece of that puzzle? Being proactive about budgets and plans for 2023.
What do you want to accomplish in 2023? Are you properly positioned from a marketing perspective?
If you’ve done very little to sharpen your brand and marketing since March 2020, I’ll suggest it is time. It’s no secret massive shifts have occurred in the economy.
Even at Element 47, we’ve gone from working primarily in the office to a team working from multiple states in three time zones. Companies around the world are continuing to successfully navigate remote work, while others have chosen to return to in-person or a hybrid work environment.
Now we’re in the midst of what seems to be a mild (for now) recession with aggressive inflation. We see our clients and new prospects taking a long hard look at their marketing strategy and company brand. What was an ideal prospective hire or customer 2.5 years ago is likely different today. Messaging that resonated in March 2020 doesn’t necessarily work today. Your visual brand has probably aged like a banana.
So as you look ahead to next year, here are three ways to put your organization into a position of readiness:
Strategy/Proper Planning
When was the last time you took a deep dive into your company’s marketing strategy? Possibly never? It’s shocking how many agencies simply enable bad decisions by diving right into tactics.
Tactics are great, but shooting without aiming rarely hits the target. We regularly see and hear about the aftermath. “Agency X” does exactly what the customer says and the result is a blown budget and no wins.
In order to win, you have to have the right target and message (and a lot of other details) ironed out before you do anything. That’s what strategy does for you.
Taking time to get the strategy right on the front end (and make sure everyone is in alignment with it) makes all the difference. You care enough about your organization to tell the world, don’t you? So why not do it right?
You care enough about your organization to tell the world, don’t you? So why not do it right?
Focused Action (aka Technology and Advertising Done the Right Way)
Technology
Pervasive as technology is in marketing, some companies are reticent to take advantage of systems that can amplify your marketing operations.
So many of our new clients have lists of customers and prospects, but take little to no advantage of the opportunity to “touch” them with the right messaging (see Strategy, above). Even fewer ever analyze the results of their campaigns.
Today, the right email system can help segment your lists so the client or prospect gets the right message for them. It’s even possible to automate “drip campaigns” that are triggered by the email recipient’s interaction with the email.
And this example is just one of the countless ways to take advantage of marketing technology.
Advertising
This is where I get emotional. I’ve lost track of the times I’ve heard someone say “we tried Google Ads, but it didn’t work.” They proceed to tell me what they did (all the wrong things) and how they ended up with a depleted budget and no results (no surprise).
Executed correctly (see Strategy, above…), advertising can turn your marketing into a money-printing machine. We have clients who have entrusted us to manage their digital advertising for years and have reaped massive rewards.
How will you know if it works? Strategic planning—with properly conducted market research—can give you a clear picture of the opportunity. So if you still believe advertising won’t work for you, there is a good chance you don’t really know because you don’t have a strategic plan. Your competitors like that.
Accountability
If I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard “I don’t know what my agency did for me,” I’d be sipping an umbrella drink in Tahiti right now. Are you paying someone who may or may not be getting you closer to your goals?
I hate to sound like a broken record…but yeah, strategy. If you have a detailed strategic plan, you’ll know if you’ve hit your goals or not. They’ll be written, in black and white, for everyone to judge.
When meeting with a prospective client, I’m always quick to say “Our goal for every client is to ‘Make it Better’ for them. If we don’t do that, we’re going to get fired. So we absolutely must understand what a ‘win’ looks like when it happens.”
Ready to win? We are too. Here at Element 47, we can’t wait to make 2023 our best year yet. Let’s make it yours too.