The 2019 Race - How To Conduct Effective Marketing

Ready for the 2019 Race?

EOY. Pretty awesome...or pretty daunting. Either way, it's the end of a cycle and the beginning of another. I'd like to help you purposefully come up with a strategy for next year, by learning and focusing on the right skills, and if you don't have time, then allowing a professional to help you with it!

The Right Soccer Skills

My personal favorite sport, and the world's is soccer. This being said, I spent all of my high school years in the sport, allowing me to learn more and more about myself, and less and less about the rest.

On a practice day I saw one of our teammates do some amazing tricks, and it looked pretty easy to do. I practiced the move. It consisted of the ball moving backwards while I was running backwards on top of it and placing my feet right next to the other while allowing the ball to "meg" me, or go under my legs, making it look awesome! Time happened and I reached the goal of accomplishing the trick.

The right marketing skills are important just as the right soccer skills.

Highly confident in this newly learned trick, I tried to use it during a game, which failed miserably and allowed the other team to score on us.

The same thing can happen to us during the year as we learn what the

The beauty of marketing is that what you've built in 2018 may help you in 2019. So Here are 3 things to do today in order to plan your next year, marketing-wise.

1. Company Inventory

Take an inventory of what's been going on this year. This includes revenue, high-sale amount, low-sale amount, average sale amount and marketing expenses throughout the year.

As you understand where your money went this year and if it was correctly invested, you can duplicate the process and success in the one hand, or on the other hand stay away from mistakes that cost you time and money. Your Point of Sale System should have all of this information.

2. Brand Identity Assessment

A lot of people have a misunderstanding of what a brand is. The brand is what the customer thinks of your company and product as a whole. Different items such as logo, certain colors in posts and flyers, the feel of design, product design and more essentially create the brand identity.

It is very important that the brand identity is parallel to the service and customer satisfaction and as that grows, your brand should be built upon such reviews. Consider a re-brand as well if it's not reaching the right audience or doesn't connect with it.

3. Marketing Cost Analysis

Not spending money on marketing or spending too much can be a problem. The best way to make sure you're not going too far on either side is by finding out the COS (cost of sale) and ACS (average customer spending) and of course marketing budget spent.

Once you find out these numbers you'll see if the budget you have created for next year is accurate. NOTE: Use last years numbers as a soft guide, since next year may be different and add a little cushion for testing.

Marketing: Similar To Soccer

In soccer, there's a 90-minute amount of continuous play. Within the 90 minutes there are lows and highs. The same way, your marketing strategy throughout the year will have lows and highs. Before a soccer game, the coach sets up a strategy that the team will have to follow as closely as possible and together, as a unit without any time-outs. Your company should have a strategy before the beginning of the year and it should work as one unit with the other departments such as operations, production and sales.

Focus on the right skills and enhancements. It doesn't matter if one is getting a nice brand out there, if no one is looking at it, and it doesn't matter if millions of people look at your service if your brand identity doesn't go with the quality of your service and customer satisfaction.

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