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Mid-Year Marketing Checkup: Are You on Track?
4 Plays10 months ago
In this episode of the Onya Mic podcast, Ashley discusses the importance of conducting a mid-year marketing checkup. She emphasizes the need to assess current marketing goals, measure performance metrics, and understand shifts in consumer behavior. The conversation also covers the necessity of reevaluating budgets and ensuring that messaging aligns with current consumer sentiments. Ashley encourages listeners to take this opportunity for a reset and to reach out for support if needed. Takeaways
- Consider this your mid-year marketing checkup.
- It's important to assess your current results with marketing goals.
- What doesn't get measured, doesn't matter.
- Measure progress based on recent checkpoints, not competitors.
- Consumer habits and preferences are shifting, especially in an election year.
- Reevaluate your budget and resource allocation based on performance.
- Your messaging must be consistent with current consumer behavior.
- People buy based on their emotions, not just logic.
- This is the perfect time of year for a reset in your marketing strategy.
- Look at where you want to be and where you are now.
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Transcript
Introduction to Anya Mike Podcast
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to the Anya Mike podcast, a podcast where we discuss the ins and outs of marketing, running a business and tips and tricks the industry may just not be telling you, but we will.
Podcast Goals: Inspiring Business Growth
00:00:14
Speaker
If you're looking for inspiration on exactly how to grow your business with ambition, innovation and confidence while creating maximum impact to influence your clients like never before, you're in the right place.
00:00:26
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Grab your AirPods, pen, paper, or laptop, and let's get on your mic.
Host Introduction: Ashley Monk, CEO
00:00:31
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Get set and grow.
00:00:33
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And now, here's your host on the mic, CEO Ashley Monk.
Episode Focus: Mid-Year Marketing Assessment
00:00:43
Speaker
All right, everyone.
00:00:43
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Well, consider this your mid-year marketing checkup.
00:00:47
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I don't know about you, but I do not know where the time has gone.
00:00:50
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I cannot believe that it's already May.
00:00:53
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And it just feels like the year is flying by.
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I know for me and for our family, May feels like the new December in so many ways to where it has just been so fast-paced and so nonstop with school ending, getting ready for summer, and schedules shifting.
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And that is true of business too.
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I feel like things are just going so quickly and goodness, it is hard to keep up.
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But I know for all of us, we're probably all listening to this in different places, but there is a good chance coming off of last year that maybe if you hear you're listening to this episode today, you're feeling a little bit behind when it comes to your marketing.
Evaluating Marketing Goals and Outcomes
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I know a lot of organizations have felt turnover toward the end of the year.
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Maybe you're just growing and you've prioritized other internal initiatives and have been maintaining your marketing.
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Maybe none of this applies to you.
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And you're like, honestly, we're doing great.
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We're right on pace or ahead of space.
00:01:41
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If that's you, amazing.
00:01:43
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This episode is still for you because we're kind of going to do a mid-year, almost mid-year marketing checkup.
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to talk about where you are at on pace with your goals.
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So consider this almost your how-to to figure out, okay, what is working?
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What is not working when it comes to your digital marketing strategy?
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And how can we get on pace?
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So we're just going to dive in and let's get to it.
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So
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First things first, this probably sounds basic and counterintuitive, and maybe you've already done this, but when's the last time that you've assessed your current results with your marketing goals and objectives?
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Maybe you're doing this weekly if you're running on EOS or some type of a scorecard system, maybe you're doing it monthly, or maybe you've just gotten out of the habit.
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Whatever the answer is, that's okay.
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But step one,
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How are you on pace with your performance metrics?
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And have you set metrics?
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We are firm believers that what doesn't get measured doesn't matter.
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And so within our organization, it's critical that we're tracking our results and then client results every single week.
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We are looking at what are our benchmarks?
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Are we meeting them?
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Are we not?
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And we're looking at them week to week, month to month, quarter to quarter, and year over year.
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And I would encourage you to do the same.
00:02:52
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What are the way the best way that I found to look at this are what are the top three outcomes or results that you need marketing to drive in your business?
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Is it leads like for our colleges?
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Is it is it students yielded through enrollment?
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If you are maybe in the home services, it's maybe it's leads to be able to book a consultation or a sales call.
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What is that?
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What are the top one to three metrics?
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Those are your leading indicators.
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What are the things that you're going after?
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But then obviously it's hard to be able to define the exact point.
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Let's use the example of a college, the exact point a student converted, because there are a lot of factors that are going to contribute to the outcome.
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So what we need to do as marketers is figure out,
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okay, what are those points on the journey that we can track?
00:03:36
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So that's going to be the most critical thing that you do is what are the outcomes that your marketing is supposed to support?
Impact of Consumer Trends on Marketing
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And then what maybe are those other indicators along with that outcome that you can use to measure that?
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And how are you pacing?
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It's really simple.
00:03:51
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And when you are tracking that week after week and month after month, it is that much easier to be able to see the progress and where you're going.
00:03:58
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Now the word of encouragement that I want to give you when you're doing this, and it comes from a book right behind me called the gap in the game.
00:04:03
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You can see it.
00:04:04
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If you are watching today, right on this bookshelf, amazing, amazing book that when it comes to the way that you measure progress, especially in marketing, it is so tempting to compare ourselves to other organizations and competitors.
00:04:19
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And there is value in that there is value in looking at what other people are doing, not reinventing the wheel and learning from others and applying it to your organization.
00:04:27
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But at the end of the day, when it comes to your marketing and when it comes to yourself too, you don't want to measure the gap between where you are now and where you want to be.
00:04:36
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You want to measure the progress between where you want to be and then that most recent checkpoint.
00:04:41
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Um,
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So anyway, go check it out, but fantastic read.
00:04:46
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Okay.
00:04:46
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Next thing that you need to do, you need to be looking at consumer behavior and trends that have changed since January.
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So safe to say 2025 has been a big year.
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It's an election year.
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So we all know.
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that anytime that there is a change in administration, consumer habits, consumer preferences, the state of the economy, those are shifts that are directly or indirectly going to affect your organization over the next six to even 24 months.
00:05:13
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So especially those first 90 to 120 days, you really want to pay attention to what, how does my consumer feel?
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How are they reacting?
00:05:21
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How are they responding to the shifts in the economy?
00:05:25
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That's really important.
00:05:26
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There have been a lot of changes this year.
00:05:27
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So paying close attention,
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to how that has affected or triggered your business differently is going to be mission critical.
00:05:33
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And maybe if it hasn't yet, that trickle down effort is going to take place over the next six to 12, even 24 months to say the least.
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So that's step one.
00:05:41
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You also want to look at how are consumers using social media or technology differently?
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I know on social platforms, the algorithms have shifted quite a bit again.
00:05:51
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TikTok in January was almost banned and then it wasn't.
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Now it's talking, we're talking about it again.
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Hard to keep up.
00:05:58
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AI has evolved a lot, quite rapidly.
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We all know this.
00:06:02
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So what are those trends that are taking place and have you capitalized on them?
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And do you need to shift your strategy?
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I know for us, there are a lot of things, even now we've been using AI, but we can shortcut even more of those things with AI.
00:06:13
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So we're incorporating more of them into our systems or we're changing the way that we measure.
00:06:18
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I know one, one shift in social media specifically, that's really important is people are less inclined to follow.
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That's been true probably the last year or two.
00:06:27
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And so that's a harder, harder indicator and not always a measure of success, nor is engagement rate.
00:06:33
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Now bookmarks and DMS can sometimes hold more weight.
00:06:35
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So
00:06:36
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Have there been market shifts that have affected your organization, but also the way that you measure success since January?
Optimizing Marketing Budgets and Resources
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Think about that.
00:06:43
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So it might be time to go back, revisit and just touch base and make sure that everything that you've planned for this year is still accurate.
00:06:49
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Next thing that we might need to do, and this I promise you, even if you're coming from an organization where this is capped, but I'm just going to tell you what it is, you might need to change your budget.
00:06:57
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You might need to reevaluate your budget.
00:07:00
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Some of you might be saying that's impossible.
00:07:02
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I have dollars for this year.
00:07:03
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It is so possible.
00:07:05
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Changing your budget doesn't always mean adding more money.
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Sometimes it means spending less and sometimes it means redistributing it in other areas.
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Sometimes it is though.
00:07:14
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Sometimes it is asking for more money.
00:07:15
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If you are tracking and you have a scorecard and you can measure outcomes and you can tie them to the result that you're getting,
00:07:21
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then why wouldn't you want to go and ask for more money to support those initiatives if they are aligned with the organization as a whole?
00:07:27
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But you may need to double down more and shift money over to areas that are working really, really well.
00:07:32
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So maybe for you, that's Google and pay per click.
00:07:35
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You're seeing all of your most, maybe not the highest volume of leads, but the most qualified leads are coming from Google and you need to shift maybe, I don't know, 10% more over there to see if that continues to matriculate the way that you think it is.
00:07:47
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Maybe you need to cut something.
00:07:49
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Maybe you're spending all of this time.
00:07:50
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You're in B2B.
00:07:51
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You're in tech.
00:07:52
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You are spending all this time on social media and it's not working because your customers aren't hanging out there.
00:07:57
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That's okay.
00:07:57
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Let's pull back that effort.
00:07:59
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And maybe it's not even just budget.
00:08:01
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Maybe it's time resources, but.
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I always think that when you're spending time somewhere, even if you have someone that's been brought on to do that, you're spending efficiency and effort where you could be getting better results elsewhere.
00:08:12
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So maybe it is time to look at where you were spending that time and move
Aligning Messaging with Consumer Behavior
00:08:16
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some things around.
00:08:16
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Okay.
00:08:17
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So finally, the last thing, the last thing you need to do is check, is your messaging consistent with the way consumer behavior is going?
00:08:26
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Is your messaging consistent?
00:08:27
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Here's why.
00:08:28
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A lot of times in marketing and sales 101, we know that people buy based on their emotions.
00:08:34
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And so we all think that we're logical, but at the end of the day, it's our feelings that trigger us to act.
00:08:40
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And sometimes the way that we label things is critical.
00:08:44
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I know you don't want to be mischaracterized.
00:08:46
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I don't either.
00:08:47
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When someone says you're overwhelmed and you're not, and you're angry and you're not,
00:08:50
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Our marketing and the way that we communicate about our consumers and our customers is critical.
00:08:56
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And so we want to make sure that we are being relevant, that our timing is accurate, and our messaging is on point.
00:09:02
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So I know for us, for instance, we used to work more with executives that are overwhelmed.
00:09:07
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That word overwhelmed, not a lot of them feel it.
00:09:10
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Same with burnt out.
00:09:12
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That burnout culture phenomenon is kind of dying.
00:09:15
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I don't want to say that it doesn't exist, but the way that we label it is shifting.
00:09:19
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Just like we look at jargon that we use a decade ago, multiple decades ago, that happens over time.
00:09:25
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So you really need to go back to the labeling tech or like the way that your clients and your customers label things now.
00:09:31
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So how are they labeling things and is the way that you are currently describing them accurate?
Conclusion and Call to Action
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All right.
00:09:37
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I hope this was helpful.
00:09:39
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At the end of the day, all you need to do is really look at where do you want to be?
00:09:43
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Where are you at now?
00:09:45
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and what behaviors do you think within your marketing efforts are going to get you there?
00:09:49
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This is the perfect time of year for a reset to really look, reevaluate.
00:09:53
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And if you need help, reach out.
00:09:55
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I would love to hop on a call, set up a strategy call to better get to know what you might need and happy to just have a conversation.
00:10:00
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Our team can probably help if you just need to chat through this with someone.
00:10:03
Speaker
So that is all we have.
00:10:05
Speaker
Get after it, go through, okay, what are we measuring?
00:10:08
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What are we holding ourselves to?
00:10:10
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And I hope that you have a great reset.
00:10:13
Speaker
Thanks for joining us this week on the Anya Mike podcast.
00:10:16
Speaker
We'd love to hear from you.
00:10:17
Speaker
Make sure to visit our website, anyamark.com, where you can subscribe and never miss a show.
00:10:23
Speaker
While you're at it, if you found value in this episode, be sure to drop us a five-star review on iTunes and share the show with a friend to help us to continue to influence more people to create maximum impact.
00:10:35
Speaker
Tune in for next week's episode, and we'll see you then.