With the Olympics taking place this month, everyone is going to be thinking about going for the gold. Ever wonder whether your marketing is worthy of a gold, silver or bronze medal? Better yet, ever wonder how much of the newest, cutting edge, results-oriented marketing is going into your lead generation efforts?
Here are the elements that should be part of your marketing mix. Go through each and see if you are applying these marketing tactics in the right way.
The first check is around marketing strategy
Do you have a written marketing plan? Can you profile your perfect client? Have you created a budget for the year? What about goals for your marketing effort? Finally, do you know what makes your business special and are you sure your competitors aren’t saying the same exact thing?
The next section has to do with your website
Do you know how many visitors you get each month? Do you know what terms prospects use when the search for businesses like yours? What about conversions? Do you know how many leads you are currently getting from your site? Have you started a blog? How many times a week do you blog? Does your company come up on Google when you do a search for one of your top three search terms?
Then consider your social media effort
Social media is a requirement today, so let’s look at how you’ve been using social media in your marketing. Do you have updated Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter or YouTube pages? Are you posting to these sites weekly at a minimum?
Don’t forget to measure content marketing
You’ve read that content is king, but are you creating any educational content for your company? Have you published any whitepapers, ebooks or tip guides? Are you planning on doing this in 2014? How about videos? Do you have videos on your website today?
E-mail marketing is next
E-mail marketing is one of the most efficient ways to stay in front of your prospects and clients. Are you actively growing your e-mail list? Have you segmented your list? How often are you e-mailing your prospects?
Marketing has to be integrated with your sales effort
Today, sales and marketing are connected like peanut butter and jelly. Do you have a defined, documented and published sales process? Is content a major element of that sales process? Do you know how what a marketing qualified lead is for your organization?
Analytics, metrics and key performance indicators
Finally, analytics and a process of continuous improvement are mandatory. Do you have a regular review of your marketing’s performance? Do you have established goals for website traffic and leads that you measure against monthly? Do you have marketing automation software that you use to help you get real-time access to performance daily, weekly and monthly?
Most of the questions above are “yes” and “no” questions. The more times you said yes, the better your score. But we know most of you are over achievers so for those of you who want a more specific grade on your marketing.
We created the Inbound Marketing Grader Score app. Just click on the button below and in 3 minutes you will have a personalized marketing grade just for you.
Mike Lieberman, chief marketing scientist at Square 2 Marketing, is a regular contributor to SmartBlogs. You can follow him @Mike2Marketing. To follow Square 2 Marketing use @Square 2.