06 Mar 2017
It’s National Spring Cleaning Week! Time to dust down those spreadsheets...
I’m not going to tell you all to get out your dusters and deep clean your office (although believe me, it can be very therapeutic) but if you do want to get in on the spring cleaning bandwagon, a great place to start is with your marketing and comms activity. It is easy to get sucked into an annual schedule that gets repeated year on year just because you are up against a deadline and don’t have time to review. But things change and the marketplace is always moving. You need to make sure that you’re keeping up. Time to open up the windows, roll up your sleeves and dust down those spreadsheets.
Here are a few dos and don’ts to help with the process.
DO: Try and put some time aside to review your marketing activity and look at what you do, why you do it and also, when.
DON’T: settle for ‘That’s the way we’ve always done it’. Things change. People change. Make sure you are moving with the times and you’re reacting accordingly.
DO: Get a few heads round the table and encourage people to challenge things in your current plan. Ask why activities and tools are in there. Do they still provide a solution to the original problem? Does the original problem still exist?
DON’T: take things personally or get offended. Challenges and questions are good. Complacency and living in the past is not.
DO: Look at results over a certain period of time. Is the activity / tool still performing well? Has efficiency decreased? Can it be improved? How?
DON’T: keep doing something in order to tick a box. If the activity or platform is not performing, don’t keep doing it for doing its sake. Be more efficient with your time and resources. Reallocate to another area that you feel may achieve better results.
DO: Look at industry trends – are there new things that you could introduce to your marketing plan? Are they right for you? Are there emerging trends that you think may be useful? Put them on the watch list and monitor.
DON’T: feel out of your depth. Are there areas that you feel you or your team lack expertise? Identify skill gaps and explore training options.
DO: Look at what your competitors are doing. It doesn’t mean you have to do the same thing. Their activities may not be your style or shape – but awareness is never a bad thing. It may provide a new sense of perspective or simply instil confidence that you are making the right choices for you and your organisation.
DON'T: forget to put a date in the diary to do it again next year.