It’s hard to believe, but as May arrives, it signals that we are one-third of the way through 2018. As we near the halfway point of the year, it’s time to pause for a mid-year to ensure that your current marketing strategy is effective.
Here are four areas to look at:
- Social media. The social media space is always changing. For example, until recently, Facebook was a leading platform. However, scandals and other issues over the past year or so have affected Facebook’s reputation, and many users are either leaving the platform or greatly curtailing their use. Also, different demographic groups prefer different platforms. Who are you targeting in your social marketing efforts? Are you using the platform most likely to appeal to your target audience?
- Data maintenance and security. Most marketers have tons of data available. Yet at least half of marketers say:
- Their databases contain a large amount of incorrect data.
- Their databases are missing a lot of important data.
- They are having a hard time dealing with decaying data.
In addition, organizations are struggling with data security. A majority of consumers believe that their personal data is not being managed securely or appropriately and that their data is susceptible to hacks and cyberattacks. When consumers believe that their data is at risk, they will find another business that they trust more. What is your organization doing to address these concerns?
- Mobile load speed. As mobile becomes the primary source for people to conduct online searches and more, it becomes more important that your site pages load quickly. Consumers are impatient and will not wait more than a very few seconds for a page to load before they move on. Google guidelines call for all initial page elements (including interactive items) to load within 5 seconds and for subsequent pages to load within 2 seconds. Yet, the average page takes 15 seconds to load. How does your website compare with load speed?
- Marketing attribution. This is one of the most important strategies for effective marketing, yet less than one-third of marketers say they have used attribution on all or most of their marketing campaigns and only 17% say they look at performance of all their channels as a whole. If your organization is not “all in” with attribution, this is a good time to work on your efforts, even if it’s just to start looking at the budget, training and other considerations to boost your strategy for 2019.