You’re juggling numerous tasks and haven’t looked at your carefully created marketing strategy in ages. Or perhaps this document no longer reflects your fast-moving company’s goals, and you’re too time poor to take a step back and resolve it.

This is all too common for marketing professionals, who are often overstretched and the go-to colleague for ad hoc, time-sensitive comms tasks of all shapes and sizes!

Sookio to the rescue, with our top tips for taking your marketing strategy off life support and ensuring it’s a living, breathing thing you’re proud of…

Make the strategy your guiding light

It might be that your marketing strategy is in a folder and that you look at it occasionally, but are not referring to it day-to-day. Maybe you even feel you know most of it by heart? However, there is huge value in creating mechanisms through which the strategy is the focal point of your discussions, so it becomes a chief reference for prioritisation, project planning, and adopting new and experimental approaches.

Bring the document to your regular marketing meetings, refer to it as you plan social media campaigns or trial new platforms and products, and of course, dig it out for budget planning. Use the strategy to streamline any presentations you make, and to give weight to creative proposals you share. It can even be at the heart of inductions you give to new staff, ensuring they understand how your work interrelates and demonstrating that marketing is a firm priority for your organisation.

Deeply understand your audience

Audiences, their behaviour, and expectations change as the digital landscape develops – and this is increasingly speeding up. Some of the best ways to understand them include implementing surveys, holding focus groups, and including regular feedback mechanisms in your digital materials, such as at the end of e-newsletters and in polls on social media. Asking audiences directly whether your content has been useful is a means of ascertaining if your marketing approach is sound.

Attending and running events, webinars and other social happenings is another way to get to know your audience inside-out, recognising their challenges and how your work can make their lives easier.

Keep the document short and snappy

A super lengthy marketing strategy can be a barrier, so keep the document concise and structure it with clear headings so you can skim through it with ease when busy. If you’re wedded to a prolonged and/or outdated document until the next revision window, summarise it in a one-pager for yourself, highlighting essential SMART objectives and any barriers you may have found along the way. This will strengthen your future version.

Ditch outdated material

Conducting regular audits of your organisation’s marketing across digital and print is an essential component to maximising the impact of your marketing strategy. If content is outdated or no longer relevant, you can ensure it’s amended or removed, so that your target audience doesn’t get frustrated by useless material. This helps in terms of sustainability, too.

No time for auditing and diving deep into the data? Sookio can do this for you! It’s one of our favourite tasks.

Lead with the data

Ensure your strategy includes key performance indicators (KPIs) and tangible, SMART objectives which require you to consult the document continually, so it’s as useful a piece of writing as possible day-to-day. You may like to incorporate and follow a framework, such as RACE, to help structure your strategy.

If you’re yet to define content pillars for your website content, social media and e-comms, a marketing strategy is the perfect place to house these, drawing on insights from your audit. You can then measure success via analytics, and adapt the pillars as your business grows.

Benchmark for success

Together with senior leadership and your closest colleagues, you can define competitors and check out their digital presence on a regular basis. You’ll learn a lot through this process, including which platforms their audience is drawn to and the type of content that’s proving the most engaging for them.

From there you might seek to mirror aspects of a competitor’s approach, while retaining your organisation’s tone of voice and branding. (Reinventing the wheel isn’t always necessary!) And you will spot avenues through which to completely differentiate your organisation from the competition, taking the opposite direction in reaching new followers, supporters and customers.

Create windows for review

Planning is key when it comes to strategic work of all kinds - not least when it comes to the ever-shifting world of marketing. Carve out time in your diary for reviewing your marketing strategy - perhaps on an annual basis during a less busy period, or quarterly to align with your goals and objectives.

Ensure you bear budget definition timings in mind and allow time for sign-off from senior leadership as appropriate. An away day (or half-day) can be a fantastic way to reflect on your current strategy and conduct a SWOT on your approach, which will be invaluable as you redraft it.

Reach out for support!

Sookio works with comms teams in purpose-driven organisations that want to finetune their marketing activity to achieve ambitious, realistic business goals.

Work with us to define your strategy and audience personas, set goals and objectives, and keep your approach live and kicking through monthly consultancy meetings.

We’re also experts in producing brilliant content including paid and organic social media campaigns, video, podcasts, and copywriting, so do get in touch and we will add some magic to your marketing!

Your digital marketing strategy is dying…here’s how to make it thrive!