Naughty or Nice – Did you meet your marketing goals for 2010?

Come December, we all will look back on the year to see if we reached our goals. Focusing this state-of-mind on your company’s marketing program will help you compare your marketing goals to the marketing reality.

Blow the dust off of your 2010 Marketing Plan. Hopefully, December isn’t the only time you’ve evaluated your marketing tactics this year. For many, this will be the first time the plan you spent weeks developing sees the light of day. Don’t let this misstep discourage you from fully evaluating your marketing from 2010 for 2011. Go through the plan line by line to see what dropped by the wayside and what was executed.

Define Success. Were you looking to add 20 new clients or grow revenue by 10%? Without knowing what you were aiming for you, you won’t be able to determine if you got there. If you crafted a solid marketing plan, that information should be laid out for you. If the goals weren’t clearly set, this isn’t an excuse to stop the review process. Putting together metrics after the fact isn’t ideal, but it’s better than nothing.

Determine the ROI. Once you’ve pulled together a list of what was executed in 2010, planned or otherwise, you can now calculate the return on your marketing investment. A good approach is to start with the big picture and determine the total ROI for marketing for the year and then break it down by project. Seeing where the ROI is the highest will help you prioritize marketing initiatives for next year.

Be Honest About the Results. You might be disappointed to know that the direct mail campaign your team labored over for months didn’t result in enough new clients, but it was the less exciting SEO project that saw results. While it might be tempting to gloss over the missteps of 2010, it’s necessary to really look at what worked and what didn’t.

Bring Together the Team. Go through the goals for 2010 and the ROI figures with the full team to keep everyone in the loop and to get their feedback. This is the time to look beyond the ROI numbers to see the factors that led to success and the challenges that led to failed programs.

Once you’ve gone through this process, make sure you put all this effort to work for you. Learn the lessons of 2010 and plan for success in 2011.

And in 2011, make sure you review your marketing plan regularly so you stay on target!

Erin Higgins
Director of Marketing Services
ehiggins@cmasolutions.com