Time for A Marketing Tune-up
6/23/2009
by Michele Schermerhorn, Contributing Writer

If you have been in business any length of time, I can assure you that habits, not conscious thought, are guiding your marketing actions. Many business people are great optimists, or they probably wouldn't have gotten into the game to begin with. They keep doing everything they've ever done in the hope that one day it will produce results. STOP! It's time to get the brain back in the game!

If you are like most people, each time you come across a new marketing idea you add it to your existing approach. You never think to weed out the approaches which haven't yielded any fruit yet. You just keep adding more. Time for that to change!

Marketing strategies and actions tend to accumulate. They hang around and continue to siphon off time from your day (even when they may not be working as well as you'd like). We get into habits of actions. Seldom do we take time in our busy schedule to really assess how we are spending our time.

To improve your marketing, you'll need to clean out some old ways of working.

Start to make this a habit. Every week, at a minimum, schedule time in your busy day for a marketing tune-up. Ask yourself the following questions during that tune-up:

1) What's working in my current marketing efforts?
2) What's not working at all?
3) What's not working as well as it should and how can I improve it?

What's Working?

These showed be hard to find. They are all the marketing actions you are taking which are successfully getting your name in print, driving traffic to your website or blog, making the phone ring, and selling product.

What will we do about these? Keep doing them! In fact, is there a way to expand on a currently successful marketing tactic? Expand the places where you do traditional advertising? Write more articles? Advertise in more women-related ezines?

Try to expand the marketing actions that are working.

What's Not Working At All?

Pretty obvious what we should do with these, right? Quit doing them. Don't live on the false hope that someday these tactics will surprise you. You don't have time for that luxury. Concentrate on what's working now and what can be improved.

What's Not Working As Well At It Should & How Can It Be Improved?

Many of your marketing tactics may be yielding results, just not to the level you would like. It's time to assess these and determine ways to improve them. Maybe a lot of traffic is coming to your website but your conversion to sales is small. Then you need to redesign the website. What would make your site more attractive to potential customers? Don't know? Ask them! Add a survey form to your site. Ask your customer what they would like to find on your site. Be as ruthless as you can in assessing your site. Ask others to give you candid advice about your website and LISTEN TO THEM!

In this same way, you will look at every marketing tactic which is yielding results but could do better. As you do this, you will be well on your way to improving the results of your marketing efforts and freeing up time from those actions that are failing you now.
The hardest part of tuning up your marketing efforts is getting started. The time is NOW! Ready?

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