When was the last time you reviewed your company’s marketing standard operating procedures (SOPs), analytics, and strategies? If it’s been more than six months, then it may be time to reassess your processes and evaluate which marketing strategies are working well, and which areas need improvement. Whether you’re a small business striving for growth or a seasoned B2B company looking to stay ahead, reviewing and updating your marketing SOPs and Best Practices can make all the difference.
Here are five essential steps to ensure your marketing efforts stay relevant, effective, and aligned with your business goals.
1. Customer Persona Review and Update
Put simply, a customer persona review is the process of evaluating and updating the profiles that represent your ideal customers. These personas are fictional, generalized representations based on research and data about your existing and potential customers. For example: Max is a young entrepreneur in his mid thirties who is socially connected and who deeply cares about the environment. From there, you can add in location, education and income levels, online habits, current challenges, and other demographics that help you get a real picture of a potential customer. Ideally, generating at least three to five personas helps businesses understand their audience better, tailor content and marketing strategies, focus social media and digital marketing campaigns, and improve customer satisfaction and engagement.
SOP: Conduct a thorough review of your customer personas to ensure they accurately reflect your target audience’s current demographics, needs, motivations, behaviors, and pain points.
Best Practice: Interview current customers and analyze recent market research data to gather insights for refining and updating your personas. Update information and adjust messaging strategies accordingly.
2. Content Marketing Strategy Refresh
A content marketing strategy is a wide umbrella that encompasses a strategic approach to creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience—and drive profitable customer action. Under this umbrella, your content marketing strategy could include email marketing, social media marketing, blogs, video shares, mail campaigns, press releases and more.
SOP: Evaluate the performance of your current content marketing efforts, including blog posts, videos, social media content, etc. with a content audit. Start by downloading analytics and data from the distribution channels that you use for your marketing efforts.
Best Practices: Review analytics and data from each of your sources to gain a good understanding of how much of your audience you are currently engaging. Update your content calendar with new topics aligned with current industry trends and audience interests.
3. Revisit SEO Practices
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) refers to the process of optimizing your website and its content to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) for relevant keywords and phrases. The goal of SEO is to increase organic (non-paid) traffic to your website by improving its visibility and authority in search engines like Google, Bing, and others. Essentially, since many customers (including B2B) begin their purchasing journey through online research, you want to ensure that your company is appearing in their search results. Higher rankings in search results enhance your brand visibility and credibility, especially when appearing for industry-specific keywords.
SOP: Review and optimize your website’s SEO strategies to ensure visibility and ranking improvements on search engines.
Best Practices: Perform keyword research to identify new opportunities and update meta tags, headers, and content with relevant keywords. Optimize site speed and mobile-friendliness –and ensure compliance with the latest SEO best practices and algorithm updates. Regularly update your site with fresh, reliable, and valuable information. Doing so will show Google that your site is active and has relevant content, which in turn can improve the ranking of all of the pages on your site.
4. Social Media Engagement Strategy Review
A social media engagement review is really something you should be doing quarterly. Fortunately, social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn make the performance data readily available. Reviewing the data behind your social campaigns and monthly content will help you learn more about your audience and what they’re responding to, allowing you to adjust your future campaigns accordingly.
SOP: Monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of your current social media engagement strategies across platforms.
Best Practices: Analyze engagement metrics (likes, shares, comments, etc.) to identify which platforms and types of content resonate most with your audience. Adjust your posting schedule, content formats, and messaging tone to increase engagement and follower growth.
5. Email Marketing Campaign Optimization
Don’t forget about email. Permission-based email marketing is still a great way to connect with your audience, especially for those who may not be on social media as much. Newsletters are a great way to share news, offers and longer content, delivered directly to your audience’s In Box. Your newsletters can target their needs more specifically than you may be able to on social media. Plus, they allow you ways to share the “personal” stories of your business, with a sincere message, team photos, and more.
SOP: Review and optimize your email marketing campaigns to improve open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates.
Best Practices: Segment your email lists based on customer behavior and preferences. A/B test subject lines, content formats, and calls-to-action (CTAs) to determine the most effective approaches. Ensure compliance with email marketing regulations (e.g., GDPR, CAN-SPAM) and periodically update your email templates with fresh designs and updated messaging. Regularly review and update your mailing lists to ensure you have the most up-to-date information available. Keep them “consumable” – a few sentences for each topic that link to longer form content on your website.
These SOPs and Best Practices can help ensure that your marketing efforts remain effective and aligned with current industry trends and customer preferences. With regular updates and optimizations based on data-driven insights, your marketing efforts will contribute to sustained growth and engagement for your business and increase brand awareness across all platforms of engagement. If you need help creating an effective marketing strategy for your business, reach out to insight180. We’re here to help!
