improve your marketing

Although marketing is a powerful influence on the success of any business, many company leaders fail to treat it as a continuous project. As a result, their marketing efforts remain stagnant and unproductive.  

At the same time, business and marketing leaders who commit to continually improving their marketing strategies see significant progress in their customer relationships, and ultimately, their business growth.  

Continually improving your marketing starts with asking the right questions. Revisiting these specific questions helps keep your marketing up-to-date and ensures your customers’ needs are being met. 

Here are 14 questions to keep asking to continually improve your marketing. 

Has Your Ideal Customer Changed?

People change over time. Their values shift. Their behaviors change. They get new jobs, friends, and interests. Because of these inevitable changes, you must revisit your customer profiles often. 

If your target customer has changed, it’s a good idea to create new buyer personas for these updated customer profiles. This ensures your marketing team is aware of how their target audience is growing and allows them to make predictions about where they’ll go next.  

Have Your Customers’ Pain Points Changed?

Often, our customers change because the world around them does. For instance, the COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted people’s daily lives, leading to challenges they didn’t have before. Smart marketers pay attention to when their target audience’s pain points change, whether because of a world event or personal shift.   

When new challenges arise in your customers’ lives, be the first to acknowledge those issues and present products and services that help them overcome them. 

Can You Reach a New Market?

Eventually, you’ll be interested in scaling your business. You’ll likely want to follow your current target audience as it grows, but don’t shy away from the opportunity to reach a new market. 

Tapping into a new market should be a data-driven decision. In other words, don’t decide to pursue a new market because you think this group of people will love your products and brand. Instead, let the data show which market is most promising.  

Which Types of Content are Working?

Certain types of content resonate best with your target audience. For example, it could be video, images, infographics, audio, or other visual content. Doing thorough research on your target audiences’ preferences allows you to put out content that will resonate with your ideal customer. 

Over time, the most popular types will reveal themselves, and you’ll focus your effort on those. But, your customers’ content needs will likely change, so you must revisit this question throughout the year to help you optimize your content marketing efforts. 

What Content Updates Can You Make?

In addition to finding out what content types are working, you’ll also identify which ones aren’t. Always ask if you can make updates to a piece of content before scrapping it altogether. For instance, can a blog post that isn’t performing well be refreshed with better links and updated tips? Will an SEO update on your website be better than a complete redesign? 

Beware of updating too often. Instead, allow your customers to get used to the content you provide and give you feedback on whether they like it or not. 

Are You Offering Your Products and Services the Way Customers Want?

You don’t necessarily need to change your entire business model. However, the way you offer your products or services must benefit your customers. How your customers want their products and services delivered to them may change over time. 

For instance, let’s say you’re running a subscription business. Your target base loved subscriptions at first, but now they’re interested in ownership. It would be wise to research how to transition from offering subscription access to a product to customers purchasing and retaining ownership of it.   

If you decide to change how you offer your products and services to your customer, ensure it’s based on customer feedback and proof of changed behavior, wants, or needs. 

How Can You Improve the User Experience?

We’re becoming more and more immersed in a digital world. Because of this, the user experience on your website is that much more a priority for your business. At least, it should be. 

You should already be tracking UX on your website. If you aren’t, start now. Then, make it a regular practice to explore how you can improve the user experience. For example, will a popup form on your product page that encourages visitors to sign up for exclusive access to a new product launch help their experience or hinder it? 

Ultimately, any improvements you make to your site should be rooted in bettering the customer experience.   

Is Your eCommerce Platform Meeting Customer Needs?

Offering eCommerce shopping to your customers adds a layer to your user experience. Keeping up a blog on your website is one thing. Maintaining an eCommerce operation is another. 

Your eCommerce store’s success is highly dependent on the platform you use and if that platform is meeting customer needs and expectations. 

Look at it from both a business and customer perspective. For instance, if a different ecommerce platform is more cost-effective and supports the growth of your operation, it may be time to switch. Or, if it offers a more optimized customer experience with critical e-Commerce functionalities you’re currently missing, switching may be the right option.     

Ensure you do thorough research before choosing to re-platform.   

Are You Collecting Useful Data?

Implementing data analytics is crucial to your marketing success. Without the ability to collect, process, and leverage data about your customers, business, marketing, sales, and so forth, you’re less likely to make informed decisions that drive business growth and longevity. 

That said, the data you collect must be accurate and useful. The only way to ensure this over time is to revisit your data analytics strategy consistently. If the information you’re collecting isn’t answering the questions you’ve posed, it’s time to make adjustments. 

How Are Your Email Marketing Campaigns Performing?

Despite what people think, email isn’t dead. In fact, email marketing campaigns still sit at the top of the list of the most impactful marketing tactics out there. Therefore, you should be tracking the performance of each campaign and studying the results once they’re finished. 

If you’ve yet to crack the code on successful email marketing, look deeper at how your target audience engages with email. Find out things like:

  • The length of the emails they engaged with the most 
  • How they like emails structured
  • What kinds of content resonates most in an email 
  • The CTAs they click the most 
  • What value must be provided in an email to get an open  

Are You Utilizing Social Media Effectively?

The rise of social media marketing is part of the reason why people think email marketing is decreasing in popularity. Many people engage with at least one social media platform daily, and that’s made it an attractive marketing channel for businesses worldwide. 

However, there are many social media platforms to choose from, and that can be a trap for marketers. They end up signing up for too many and their efforts become counterproductive. 

Revisit your social media platforms at least a few times a year to assess their marketing effectiveness. For example, if your target audience is no longer engaged on a particular social media platform, it’s time to concentrate your efforts on others.  

How Are Your Offline Marketing Campaigns Doing?

Many marketers make the mistake of focusing their efforts entirely in the digital realm. Instead, you should be using a combination of online and offline techniques for the best chance at optimal results.  

Ensure you’re taking just as much time on your offline marketing campaigns. Focus on creating a consistent brand experience by ensuring your offline marketing content complements your online marketing content and vice versa. 

Are You Staying Within Your Budget?

You’ll likely have a budget to allocate funds to different marketing strategies. If you don’t, create one today and put a structure in place to manage and maintain it over time. 

At the minimum, you should be looking at your marketing budget each quarter. Do a thorough audit. Identify if you’re staying consistent or overspending. Calling your budget into question often helps you turn things around faster if you’re doing the latter. 

How Well is Your Marketing Team Working Together?

The cohesiveness of your team influences the execution of your marketing campaigns. When everyone works well together, you have a better chance at marketing your business successfully. Conversely, if they don’t, team drama will likely slow your attempts to improve your marketing. 

Evaluate your marketing team annually. Look at how well or not well everyone worked together and how that impacted marketing results for the year. Making it standard practice to review your team’s performance will give you insight into when to add another member, let one go, and so forth. 

Conclusion 

This is just the beginning of the list of questions to keep asking to improve your marketing continuously. So, take some time to answer these questions and others that will help you enhance your strategies and keep your business on track to grow year after year.    

By Anurag Rathod

Anurag Rathod is an Editor of Appclonescript.com, who is passionate for app-based startup solutions and on-demand business ideas. He believes in spreading tech trends. He is an avid reader and loves thinking out of the box to promote new technologies.