Be on Top of Your 2020 Marketing Game: A Quick Check-list for an Effective Marketing Strategy

2019 is ending soon, a year full of different events and milestones for any business. Now is certainly the best time to reflect on major events that occurred throughout the year in terms of your marketing strategies. 

Whether some things worked well or didn’t, it is always important to understand the dynamics behind everything in order to have a clearer strategy for the year 2020. 

We have taken the time to create this quick checklist to help you revisit 2019 with all of its goods and bads.

• Use data and statistics to review your activities

Have you had any marketing activities brought back a high ROI? Have you had some which didn’t go as well as planned?

List them all, think carefully about the reasons they worked or not. Some ideas can be reused, some might need to be tweaked in order to excel in the future. Now is the best time to know that; which brings us to the next point…

To wrap it up…

• List all your marketing activities
• Categorize in terms of ROI 
• List out reasons for success or failure for each activity
• Assess each activity to improve

• Analyze the way you distribute your budget

Not all channels used are profitable at times or bring us the desired ROI we have hoped for. The end of the year is a good time to analyze all of your marketing channels, whether through social media platforms or on-the- ground campaigns. 

Cut down some costs off channels that aren’t doing so well, think of how to improve them, and invest a bit more in the ones that are exceeding expectations. 

To wrap it up…

• List all your marketing channels 
• Classify which one brings higher ROI and which doesn’t
• Review financial budget of every channel
• Redistribute budget

• Assess your current products and services image

It is always more exciting to launch new products in the first few months of a new year. However, doing that requires serious examining of older products/services and their performance throughout the years. 

Do they need some tweaking or modification, or you should discontinue offering them altogether? Do you need to replace them with something different? Take a step back to think whether they achieved the awareness they deserved or not and whether they are costing you more than the profit they generate, then act upon that.

To wrap it up…

• List all products 
• Asses their status (modifying product or discontinuing..etc)
• Plan how to improve them if they need improvement
• Add new products (only if necessary)

• Check on your clients and customers

It is always wise to revisit your clients’/customers’ database and find out which of them is new and which of them is a loyal one? Did you deliver what they really wanted and needed?

Now is the time to check on them and conduct focus group discussions, or perhaps pass on surveys, or schedule some interviews with them to listen to what they have to say to you and what needs to be done to keep their loyalty. 

To wrap it up…

• Categorize and segment your customers according to loyalty
• Find out whose satisfied and who isn’t initially
• List suitables modes of collecting feedback for every customer/client
• Conduct focus group discussions, surveys, interviews..etc

• Keep an eye on your competitors

One needs to know their position in the market. Consider thinking of your competitive advantage and reflecting upon it. Is your brand delivering what it claims to its target audience/market? How can you present something to your clients and customers if nothing makes you standout in the market?

Draft a plan of making your brand standout by rethinking your value proposition and competitive advantage. 

To wrap it up…

• Follow your competitors
• Audit their websites and content on a weekly basis
• Monitor how they interact with their customers
• Keep up with your value proposition and what makes you stand out in the market

To sum it up, here is your downloadable checklist to excel in 2020!