2015 Review: 5 Questions to Ask Your Marketing Team
It’s early November and, for many of us, this means two things.
Off the clock, the holiday trifecta (Thanksgiving, Christmas/Hanukah/Kwanza, New Year’s Eve/Day) has crept up: if you haven’t already concerned yourself with plans for the holidays with family, friends and work colleagues for the next near-two months, get ready for that onslaught of phone calls, texts and e-mails with plans to fill your calendar.
During business hours, the end of the year means evaluating performance and revenue and putting that data to use to see how things can be improved in all areas of the company.
For some, December 31 means making that extra push to meet sales goals set early in the year with customers and, in a lot of cases with responsibilities to vendors at the same time. Before closing the books on the calendar year, others are tasked with major intra-company responsibilities and deadlines – think company stock inventories or account reconciliations.
While we at Leverage pride ourselves in providing our clients SEO tailored specifically to their operations, there are many end-of-year aspects to their existing digital marketing operations that speak to pretty much all of our clientele.
Listed below are just a few questions we ask, and recommend our clients ask, as it relates to their online presence and current marketing strategy before 2015 turns into 2016. Some of these may also help after Baby New Year makes his entrance less than two months from now.
Has Our Organic Traffic Increased in the Last Calendar Year? Take a look back at the last three quarters as well as where you stood at this time in 2014. Concern yourself with keywords on your web page and how they are affecting your page as well as keywords you did not consider at the start of the year. Based on what you find, consider adjusting your strategy to end the year on a high note.
Has Social Media Been Effective for Us in 2015? Review how often you’ve posted on your sites and how many followers you’ve accrued over the last nine months. Based on the findings, it’s a wise move to make tweaks here as well.
Are We Ready for the Holidays? If your operations rely on sales during the holiday season, how have we prepared for this and what more can we do? Even companies whose revenues are not based on holiday shoppers can take this time to look at the best sales opportunities for your operations as the year winds down and come up with the best approach to fulfilling them.
Are We Ready for the New Year? Start looking now at the overall ROI you’ve had with your company’s current marketing strategy for the current calendar year and start concerning yourself now, rather than later, with what can be done to improve on your ROI for 2016 on both large and small scales.
And last, but certainly not least …
Are We Enjoying The Holidays? Along with time with family and friends, the holiday season provides no shortage of football. This year we have one of the greatest sports rivalries – the Bears vs the Packers – on Thanksgiving, and New Year’s weekend always means college bowls. Happy holidays for that.