Is your company's marketing game delivering results?

In the high stakes game of marketing, success oftentimes comes down to which brands are continually making the time and effort to not only attain new customers, but also retain those they currently have.

With myriad marketing options at your fingertips, are you utilizing each and every one of them to the best of your ability? If the answer is no, why is that?

While many Canadian companies use an array of marketing actions to reel-in and retain customers, there are still many others who have stuck with the same routine for years. If it is working for them, they’re less likely to want to change-up the game, though emerging with the times certainly does have its benefits.

Take some time to sit back and analyze how your marketing game is going, especially zeroing in on what is and is not working.

Email Marketing

One of the true and tested warriors in the marketing game, email marketing, can help give your brand a significant amount of attention.

For starters, a good email marketing software allows marketers (and business owners etc.) to have the ability to reach countless consumers in a professional and expedient timeframe.

With the proper software in place, email marketers can have at their fingertips:

• Top-notch email design – This is an important area because it allows you to present your messages/information to consumers in an easy-to-read manner. You can have the best message out there, but if it comes across all garbled and hard to read, you won’t exactly be looked upon as overly professional. This is especially true given more consumers are taking marketing pitches over their smartphones these days. At the end of the day, you want to see just how your intended target will see your pitch when he or she opens up your message;
• Solid landing pages – Your landing pages require mobile-readiness more than ever, so don’t think it isn’t a big deal. The goal at the end of the day is to have sales pages that provide high conversion numbers. The same holds true for your video pages, as more and more businesses are seeing the benefit of providing short and informative videos regarding their brands;
• Words that matter – Having solid looking and easy-to-work landing pages is of great importance, but never forget about the content you put on them. From an email marketing pitch to a blog post, the content must stand out (and for the right reasons). Be sure that all your content is free of errors, is easy to read, and has a call to action;
• Gauging success and failure – Even though you never want to fail with an email marketing pitch, some are always going to be better than others quite frankly. Your chosen email marketing software should help you see which campaigns are proving fruitful and which ones need some tweaking etc. From seeing site conversions to being able to segment your customer base via a single click, gather your site’s email marketing analytics and review them.

What Works and What Needs Attention?

With the right email marketing software in play, look at how your overall marketing game is doing.

Was 2015 an especially good year when it came to your email marketing outreach and ultimately your results? Did you incorporate more mobile marketing into your efforts? How active was your brand in social media?

These are all areas that you need to look at, especially given the fact that your competition is doing just that.

Sometimes being objective in grading how you and your team are marketing your brand (or for those marketers who have multiple brands to market) can be challenging. This is why it is not such a bad idea to have those not involved with your marketing efforts give their two cents on what is working and what needs reworking.

Yes, your customers and those you are hoping to convert into customers will ultimately decide how impressive your marketing efforts are, but that does not mean you can’t have others not involved in the marketing pitches providing feedback.

It can be as simple as sending one or more of your proposed email or other marketing pitches to the business team, the H.R. department, even customer service. Get their responses; consider applying some of their suggestions in your next campaigns.

When it comes right down to it, email marketing and the other forms of marketing your business opts for,need to deliver.

If your efforts haven’t been delivering up to their full potential, give your game a thorough review.

About the Author: Dave Thomas covers marketing and business topics on the web.