We’ve hit the halfway point in the year and it’s a great time to do a business review. Over the next three months, we will go over the three areas of your business that you should review every six months. 

First up is your marketing plan. While most marketing plans follow a year-long strategy, the market changes so fast that it’s a good idea to review them at least bi-annually, if not quarterly.

There are four main areas of your marketing plan that you should review: 

Take a look at your organization and marketing goals

 Your marketing plan should be built off the organizational goals of your business. This top down approach helps everyone be on the same page and ensures that the marketing engine is driving sales and operations actions and productivity.

• In your bi-annual review, look at the goals of your organization and ask yourself a few questions:
• Are these goals still in alignment with our business at this point in the year?
• Do we have any tweaks we can make to help us hit our goals?
• Are there goals that are no longer relevant?
• Are there goals we have hit and can celebrate/remove?
• Are we still reaching our key audiences?

This review will help you marketing leadership realign and be ready to hit the ground running in the back half of the year. 

Review your analytics

We recommend looking at a few key metrics every month to stay up to date on how your business is doing. Every six months, you should do a deep dive and figure out if your work has been delivering.

Here are a few questions to get you started on our deep dive analysis:

• Are you on track to hit your goals for the year? (Followers, engagement rates, website visits, email subscribers, etc.)
• Are there marketing strategies that aren’t working that you can stop doing?
• Are there some strategies you have been doing that have been overperforming? Can you lean into them?
• What strategies can you realign to hit your goals in the back half of the year?

Examine your top audiences

You are ultimately creating content for a select audience. If your audience has changed, your content is no longer relevant and might not be hitting the right people. Halfway through the year is a good time to gut check your audience and make sure that you are reaching the right people.

• Some good audience analysis questions to ask are:
• Has anything impacted your audience lately?
• Is your audience facing any new challenges that you can create a solution to?
• Is there anything new your audience might be looking forward to?

Look at Competitors

Good competitor analysis can make or break a good marketing strategy. Keeping a close eye on your main competitors can push you to try new ideas and help you come up with new strategies and solutions that can help you deliver the best products to your customers.

• When you are doing a competitor analysis, focus on these four areas: 
• Has your competitor changed their content noticeably in the last six months?
• What are people saying about the content? Dive into the comments and articles.
• What ideas can you borrow and tweak from your competitors?
• What lessons can you learn from mistakes that your competitors may have made?

A good six-month analysis can make a huge positive impact on your business in the back half of the year. It is also a great chance for your team to come together and refocus on new goals. Have questions about tweaks you can make? We can help! Contact Simply Built today!