As you plan your marketing initiatives, it’s absolutely essential to know what’s worth investing in. You have to have data in order to make strategic marketing decisions. And when you’re able to make those strategic choices about your business, you’ll save time, money, and energy while seeing the results you’re looking for.
To be strategic with your marketing, you need to have clear goals in place. But then, it’s up to you to actually use data and monitor your progress!
What Are Strategic Marketing Decisions?
When you start making strategic marketing decisions, you use data and your goals to make choices that are fully aligned with your overall business vision! That means that, in order to make those decisions, you have to have that big-picture vision for your business.
Instead of making decisions for your marketing that are just based on ideas, you’ll start analyzing your data. You’ll see what’s working so that you can invest in the advertising efforts and marketing initiatives that are truly worth it.
As you work to build out your marketing strategy, it’s so important to make the right decisions. You have so much to handle as a business owner, and it’s absolutely critical that you don’t waste your valuable time, energy, or money investing in marketing that isn’t working for your audience or niche.
How To Make Strategic Marketing Decisions
Now that we’ve talked about what strategic marketing decisions are and why they’re so important, let’s dive into how you can make those decisions! There are lots of ways to make sure that you’re making the right decisions in your business.
Here are some of the best strategies you can use to make better marketing decisions.
Check If Your Decisions Align with Your Goals
The first step you should take to make more strategic marketing decisions? Align them with your goals!
No matter what goals you’ve set in your business, it’s so important to make decisions that align with them. That’s the key to making progress on your goals (with the least stress—and the least wasted effort). From driving organic traffic to your website to increasing sales and revenue, you need to make sure that the decisions you make are actually aligned with your goals.
The more targeted your goals are, the easier it will be to align your decisions with them and make sure you’re investing in the right types of advertising. Most people start by setting S.M.A.R.T. goals, which are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely.
But what does it actually mean to make decisions based on your goals? Let’s look at an example.
If you’re struggling to decide how to spend your money for a particular marketing campaign, and you’re torn between a Facebook Ad and Google Ad, what should you do? It’s time to look at your numbers—what has worked best in the past…for the goal of your marketing campaign?
If your main goal is to start driving traffic to your website and Google Ads have performed well, that could be the perfect strategy. If your goal is to generate downloads of a lead magnet, a Facebook Ad could work even better. Your KPIs should drive your decisions.
Related: How To Make Better Business Decisions Using Data and Analytics
Analyse Your Website Traffic to Decide Where to Invest in Advertising
Once you’ve made sure that your decisions are aligned with your goals, you need to take that next step and analyze your data. Beyond analyzing your data to make goal-driven decisions, your data helps guide you to what’s working and what’s not.
If something is “broken” in your marketing funnel, you need to know about it so you can fix it!
You also want to make sure that you’re concentrating your efforts where they’re generating the most results. That starts with diving in and exploring your website traffic.
Figuring out where your website traffic is coming from allows you to hone in on the ideal campaign strategy. If organic traffic is doing well, but paid search isn’t working at all, you can funnel more of your marketing budget and efforts towards SEO-driven content.
Even more importantly, you can evaluate what’s working throughout a multifaceted marketing campaign. That way, you can make adjustments if needed before you see that something was a waste of time or money.
Measure ROI Multiple Ways Before Investing In a Campaign
Another way you can make more strategic marketing decisions is to monitor ROI in a variety of ways. Before you invest heavily in a particular campaign strategy or approach, you can run smaller ad campaigns to test them and see which decisions would be the most effective.
Sometimes, ROI is going to take a longer amount of time to measure. But other times, something is just going to click—and you’re going to see a huge spike in traffic, sales, or other metrics.
Instead of spending tons of time puzzling through your numbers to figure out what caused the spike, what if you could do it in a snap? With our Measure and Maximize program, you’ll learn how to get exactly the data you need, available at your fingertips in an easy-to-understand format so that you can quickly understand what’s working, what needs to change, and where to invest time and money.
While you’re sipping your morning coffee each day, you can take a look at your numbers and keep tabs on which of your marketing initiatives are paying off. That way, as things shift and change, you’ll know exactly what’s going on!
Making strategic marketing decisions doesn’t have to be overwhelming…but it does have the power to completely change the way you promote your business.
For more resources on making the best decisions in your business, check out the following posts:
- Why Using Data to Make Decisions Is The Key To Growing Your Business Next Year
- How To Make Better Business Decisions Using Data and Analytics
- Why Measuring Marketing Effectiveness Is Important (& How To Get Started)
- How To Use Data To Skyrocket Your Business Growth This Year