How is the Start of Your 2015 Marketing Plan Working Out?

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By Kevin Hourigan, Bayshore Solutions President and CEO

Well, we are in the last month of the Q1 of 2015. What are your thoughts and progress on your 2015 Digital Marketing plan so far? Have you been able to execute your digital marketing plan including goals, tactics, paths and desired results?

I have been asking that question for the last week, I get many different answers. Some are absolutely killing it, others partially, and still others are in “make up” mode, far behind and trying to find their way out. Here is what I find as what is working and what is not:

• Those who had prior committed budgets around media are usually doing well for their expectations of results, both measured by time & dollar as well as increase in activity.
• Those who did not have budget approvals prior are still working on getting those and/or do not have “buy in” from upper level management to the expense or how to measure ROI.

Lesson’s learned here would be if you do not have prior budget experience, request six months and find an experienced partner who has managed these budgets before. That partner should lower risk and be motivated to make the budget work out so they can stay involved at the success of the six month trial.

The second area in which I see a range of those experiencing great success to being far behind is in content development. Those who had habits of creating content and knowing where to syndicate it are doing well, those who did not have those habits are struggling.

Content is not easy, but, as the old saying goes “Content is King” and without it, campaigns will struggle. Those who have developed content strategies know it was not easy to get there, those who have not often underestimate the commitments and amount of people (idea generators, subject matter experts and writers) that it will take to make a successful content campaign.

What we often do to help our customers commit to content is come up with a content calendar that is topic driven followed by due dates, who owns the responsibility and where to publish. It acts as a project plan and seems to be effective for those who do not have a plan or process already developed.

That said, at Bayshore Solutions, we love to “Plan our work and work our plan.” This simple content calendar exercise you can follow helps start your content commitments that ultimately may end up becoming very useful for your digital planning.

To learn more about “planning your work and working your plan” and the results we experience with our customers, please visit us at www.BayshoreSolutions.com or Contact us today.