Building an honest digital marketing roadmap.
Digital marketing spans a very wide range of considerations and it’s frequently a source of frustration and confusion, from your website, social media and paid customer acquisition. Within these buckets is an entire universe of things to consider. This is where the problems begin for most business owners and marketing executives.
A reoccurring theme that we’ve heard in countless conversations with business owners and marketing executives is that there’s simply so much to consider that they don’t know where to begin. That’s why we’ve developed our Roadmapping sessions.
Time and time again, we’ve heard from business owners and marketing executives that some of the most useful insights they’ve gained was after having a simple and honest conversation with us about their marketing. They valued being able to ask questions about tactics and strategies where we were able to apply an analytical approach to the answers. That’s what comes natural for us, to apply an analytical approach to marketing. While there may be several strategies that sound good, but if they don’t hold water under the scrutiny of analytics, they won’t in your marketing either.
What does a Roadmapping session look like?
We’ll begin by having a conversation about your business so we have a foundation. How do you naturally acquire your customers? What are your processes and what’s in place to support that process?
Then we get into an intense and honest conversation about the needs and objectives of your marketing and your business. It’s a no-holds-barred and frank conversation where BS is brought into the light and put in it’s place as what it is. We’ll look at specific strategies and explore if they make sense for your business. Do they impact your objectives and can they be measured so you know if they’re working?
We may discover that you really don’t have a firm idea of your objectives or clear expectations from marketing. However, if you’re not clear on the objectives that matter for your business, it’s almost impossible to determine the best or most sensible digital strategies to get you where you want to be. Unless you know your objectives and how to measure it, like road signs to follow along the way, then any strategy or tactic will get your somewhere. Just, maybe not where you needed to get.
We’ll then look at your digital assets to make sure they’re set-up to work as they need to for effective analytically driven marketing. In some cases, you’re website or other digital assets may not fully support recommended analytics methods. We can usually offer recommendations and options to correct an under or improperly performing digital asset.
Once we have a good understanding of your business process and the marketing objectives that matter, we can begin look at your current situation and what you’re spending marketing dollars on. We’ll review if and how the effectiveness of your present marketing is being measured and do the measurements support your objectives. It’s during this phase that we put egos aside and simply examine your present marketing to determine if it’s really working and what impact it having on your objectives. While this portion of the session can be enlightening, it can also a bit of an intervention if your’re spending money on marketing that your not sure what’s is supposed to be doing or why you’re doing it. Or, if your just easily distracted by the shiny objects.
We than move into an open Q&A about all things digital. What makes sense? What are distractions and what’s worth consideration. These questions will go back to two principle considerations.
- Do they align with your marketing and business objectives?
- Are they measurable?
After-all, you can’t manage it if you don’t measure it.
Lastly, we’ll prioritize tactics and strategies discussed and get you pointed in the right direction to take your next steps.
One you have your digital marketing Roadmap, you’ll no longer be distracted by shiny objects or pushy salespeople trying to sell on whatever marketing magic they’re offering.
