Year-End Marketing Checklist

Now’s a great time to reflect on the past 11 months and evaluate the impact of your marketing on your business results. Patterns may reveal themselves about your team or your clients. What worked and what didn’t? Here’s a checklist to help you evaluate your marketing’s effectiveness and plan for a successful 2023.

MARKETING CHECKLIST

#1: Marketing Team

1. Do you have the right internal talent in the right positions to accomplish your goals for 2023? If not, do you have a plan to hire the creative, analytical, and technical resources to fill the gaps?
2. Are your marketing goals SMART – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound?
3. Does your marketing team feel respected and appreciated?

People thrive in an organization when they understand and believe in the vision and feel respected and appreciated. Now’s a great time to let your employees know how much you value them and to clearly communicate your plans for 2023.

#2: Email Marketing Database

1. Is your email database current? If you conduct an email campaign and the number of undeliverable emails is high, it’s time to scrutinize your list to ensure email addresses are correct and don’t include typos or old email addresses.
2. Is your email database complete? Are all new sales prospects in your database? How about new contacts at existing clients?
3. Is your email database segmented? Open rates are higher when your content is tailored for the audience. Segmenting your database by customer or prospect type is valuable.
4. Is your database growing? Are you offering an incentive for visitors to your website such as a white paper or case study when they provide their email address?

Email marketing is a low cost, high return marketing tactic. Email addresses added to your database could lead to profitable new business.

#3: Website Performance

1. Is your website generating the traffic, leads, conversions, and other metrics you set as KPIs to meet your 2022 business goals?
2. Are you capturing email addresses via your website?
3. What’s driving your website’s performance? Look under the hood to see if your traffic, bounce rates, page views, mix of new and returning visitors, and average session duration are where they need to be.

Evaluating your Google Analytics data to identify trends and patterns in your website’s performance is a key action item.

#4: Reconnecting with Clients & Prospects

1. When was the last time you thanked your clients and referral sources?
2. When was the last time you reconnected with prospects to see if they solved the problem that originally brought you together?

Clients that feel connected may not need to be enticed to come back. They come back because they value their relationship with you.

A prospect’s situation has likely changed since you last connected with them. Showing empathy is key to establishing a relationship. Now’s a great time to reach out.

#5: Content Audit

1. How are your social media profiles?  Are you using the same brand phraseology for the “About Us” copy, bios, and posts? Do posts include valuable keywords and hashtags? Do your banner and profile images feature your latest visual branding assets? Are you taking advantage of the latest LinkedIn features such as lead gen forms, clickable links, and the “featured commitments” section of your LinkedIn page?
2. Which of your posts and articles have attracted the most views, likes, and other signs of engagement? Is developing content on these popular topics part of your 2023 plan?

Systematically analyzing your content from website copy to social media to product catalogs is a key action item. You’ll identify poor performing content and popular pieces to repurpose and further develop.

#6: Customer Success Stories

1. How’s your library of testimonials and customer success stories?
2. Which case studies would have the greatest impact among future customers?

Testimonials and customer success stories are effective conversion tactics. Now’s the time to reach out to customers who have seen measurable, meaningful improvements to their business because of your organization. Ask to partner with them on a customer success story.

Once you’ve documented the situation and results, develop a plan to use it across marketing channels to help tell your story.

It’s a great time to evaluate the results of your 2022 marketing efforts. Use this checklist to add structure to your analysis and plan for 2023.

Need help with your 2023 marketing planning?
Let’s talk! laura@vivalabrand.com