A marketing review is a crucial step to take when having a business in order to ensure that your marketing strategy, like the five C’s of marketing, aligns with business goals. 

You have to find out whether all marketing activities are aligned with the company’s strategic plan, as well as examining marketing effectiveness and efficiency. 

This article will explore five steps that you should take when performing a review of your marketing plan.

Why Review Your Plan?

A marketing plan is only useful when it’s up to date. It will be easy for you to review your marketing plan if it has been updated within the last six months or so since you know what goals have already been met and which are left. 

You can revise your marketing regularly with a review tool like the SWOT-Analysis.

In order for your business to succeed it is imperative to see what goals you’ve accomplished and what you have missed and find out why.  Maybe you had unrealistic goals or some problems along the way. Take time and effort to figure out where your company is heading and how you can improve your marketing plan based on the following guidelines:

Analyze Your Customers AND Competitors

The main goal is to get more (and happy) customers. So you need to find out who they are, where do you get them from and most importantly take a look at where people are not becoming customers to determine where you may improve.

You may discover that you’re so focused on recruiting new clients that you’re neglecting your current customer base. If that’s the case, make sure your strategy plan includes some classic customer service and methods for reconnecting with past clients.

Moreover, conduct research into current competitors and their marketing strategy. You can learn a lot from other companies. Don’t copy of course but see what niche you might fit in.

Check Your Social Media Performance

Facebook, Instagram and Co are the key to today’s marketing. You need to see how your marketing department is performing, and if you can exploit potentials. Marketing is all about getting your name out there and social media allows you to do that more than ever before.

Are you active on all the platforms? Is your company interacting with the clients? Can you still handle it the way you do it or do you need to hire a media expert? 

Review marketing campaigns and brand awareness among customers by seeing the numbers of likes, comments, and engagement on posts. Doing this will help improve your future marketing plans because it’s backed by data!

Identify Trends

When do you get the most customers? Is there a peak time for sales and engagement? Try to find trends and exploit them further.

The sales trend analysis is an essential component of your strategic review since it aids you in determining when and how to promote. Will you launch a marketing campaign if business slows down in April? Are there certain products that often get bought together? This might be an opportunity for a marketing strategy focusing on a product or time period.

Redefine Your Business Objectives and Goals 

The marketing review is the perfect time to reevaluate your business plan, marketing strategy and its goals. You can easily make changes or update some parts if needed after having analyzed your progress, failure and success.

You can even do it with the help of an outside perspective. Someone who does not work for you can be very helpful in seeing what is missing or where there are some blind spots. The marketing elements are not always clear cut in your business, so you can benefit from an outside perspective by asking for advice or mentoring when performing this marketing plan review.

Always be prepared to change your plan, it might be that one of the strengths has turned into a weakness during certain circumstances.  You might find out that there is a marketing element you wanted to implement but now it does not make sense because the business environment has changed and this marketing activity will do more harm than good.

Don’t be afraid to communicate these changes with your team or stakeholders, they can help in various ways if given the chance.

Implement Based on an Action Plan

Determine what resources are needed in order to execute your redefined plan  and implement what has been learned from the review. Communicate with your team and make sure there is a clear goal with specific, measurable outcomes so that it’s easy to see if you’ve achieved them or not.  

Have a strategy for implementing and a clear schedule. Understand the business strategy behind the marketing activities. Ask why you are doing it? What is the goal? How does this align with other marketing efforts currently being implemented or planned for in the future?

If you review your marketing plan every six months or at least once a year you will determine problems and find easier solutions and in the end have a more successful business!