How much time are your marketing managers spending on marketing strategy?

In short, as much time as is needed to develop and maintain this well-thought-out game plan.

A marketing strategy defines the overall directions and goals for your business and getting it off the ground and growing leaves is simply not enough. When thrown a curve ball or you just need things straightened out, it needs to be pruned, revisited, revised, and adjusted accordingly.

Get ahead of the game!

At Marketing Eye, we choose to be efficient as possible and use Robotic Marketer, a machine learning, artificial intelligence-based software. Robotic Marketer is able to flip your company’s business goals, marketing plan and information into an operational, streamlined marketing strategy. Not only does this save a ton of time, but it is more accurate when dealing with data, cuts down on labor costs and has the capacity to continually improve over time (the next step is for robots to water our plants).

Revisit, revise and adjust.

In the world of marketing; strategies, data, marketing channels and targets can all change. And this is why it is so important to stay up-to-date and review your performance.

1. Trial and error. Don’t be afraid of mistakes and failure. They are all opportunities for growth. You will see what worked and what did not work, so take that chance to be proud and that chance to be better.
2. The needs of your clients. Look deeply into what worked and did not. This can be due to the fact that your customer’s needs have changed. Take this time to adjust your key message and look into other channels to effectively engage with your audience.
3. Learn from data. Become more data driven. Understand the importance of data and how it could help improve your reach for those targets and goals.
   
4. Reports. Get into the habit of developing reports based on your company’s performance. Since implementing the marketing strategy, how has engagement looked over the past month? Which marketing channels have worked, and which ones have not?
5. Reach long-term goals. Reviewing often not only helps you become better at your job but also how you can hit those long-term goals you have set. By reviewing you can break that big goal into smaller fewer intimidating blocks giving you more confidence in your progress.

Internal implementation

Another task marketing managers are kept busy on is implementing the marketing strategy. Implementing a marketing strategy starts internally. A marketing strategy needs to be scalable and repeatable across the board. A company consists of various divisions and all of these divisions need to be on the same page when it comes to marketing. So as marketing managers, the marketing strategy needs to be flexible enough that it can be understood by all different employees. So as a team they can all reach the same goals, delegate tasks and be cohesive throughout the journey.

Additionally, this is also a stage where marketing managers can gather feedback on the strategy, particularly from employees that are in different fields who are able to provide opinions and thoughts from a more external perspective.

If not for the work of marketing managers and the time and effort spent on creating a successful marketing strategy it would be difficult to access the success of a business’s engagement with its audience or how well-received a service or product has been. Like the beginnings of a new sprout, a marketing strategy will take some to bust out from the soil. However, knowing that the seeds have been planted and maintenance is continued progress by marketing managers, it is fair to say that the success of a business is more than just the time taken, but the effectiveness of a well-developed marketing strategy.

For me, manually developing a marketing strategy without using the plethora of data available to us doesn’t make sense. Also, spending a month or so on developing a strategy, is costly. Might as well just signup for Robotic Marketer and within 24 hours, a marketing strategy will be in your inbox, with an implementation plan and a subscription to the digital dashboard that manages the performance of your marketing strategy. Easy-peasy!

Image Source: Campaign Creators on Unsplash