New Year’s resolutions aren’t just good for losing weight or saving for retirement – they can help marketers start the year out strong.
This is the season to revamp stale strategies, increase engagement, and hit the ground running with your most successful marketing campaign yet.
Beverage and beverage alcohol marketers should take a hard look at their 2017 approach to marketing, gaps, and goals, and make whatever changes are necessary. It’s a new year, which means new beginnings. Here are three New Year’s marketing resolutions everyone in the industry should make:
Let data be your guide
It’s no secret that data-backed marketing campaigns can improve customer engagement and brand awareness, yet so many companies continue to let these opportunities pass them by. There are plenty of reasons why data analytics projects fizzle, from lacking the right software and data management platforms to being priced out of the competitive data scientist employee pool.
One of the most common pitfalls companies encounter is an inability to gather useful information fast enough to convert it into real-time insights. Slow, manual data collection processes can be a death sentence for any data analytics strategy, especially one that relies on field reports. Beverage alcohol industry marketers need to gather in-store data quickly and efficiently to determine the best ways to raise brand awareness and drive sales, but some continue to employ time-consuming field management workflows.
Empower your field teams to work faster and cover more ground by leveraging a mobile data collection platform that puts an end to manual processes. No more spreadsheets, email templates, phone calls, or paper-based reports. Frontline employees can gather in-store merchandising data in real time and document shelf and display conditions with image-capturing tools and intuitive dashboards. By eliminating bottlenecks and inefficiencies in the field, marketers can finally access the kind of data needed to create dynamic, responsive campaigns.
Stay on top of your campaigns
Even the most painstakingly crafted campaigns may fail if they are poorly executed at the ground level. Beverage alcohol industry marketers need to continually keep tabs on every single component of their ongoing campaigns, ensuring in-store branding is up-to-date and in line with current messaging.
Frontline employees are in the best position to monitor retail displays and merchandising and flag any deviations. Whether a store displays the wrong marketing materials or fails to adhere to brand guidelines, field teams should be able to spot any issues and work with store managers to make the necessary adjustments. In this way, marketers can rest easy knowing their campaigns are executed like a well-oiled machine.
Don’t be afraid to take risks
All too often, CMOs and other marketing leaders are paralyzed by sky-high expectations and the pressure to create incredibly successful campaigns. As AdAge contributor Drew Neisser noted, that can lead marketers to play it overly safe with their strategies. But sometimes you have to take risks if you want to gain a competitive edge.
As tempting as it is to be conservative and stick with tried-and-true strategies that offer baseline engagement returns, don’t be afraid to experiment a little bit. Of course, taking risks just for the sake of taking risks is unlikely to pay off, so be strategic about it. The important thing to keep in mind is to not let the pressure to drive tangible results force your marketing campaigns into any one particular box.
Whatever New Year’s marketing resolutions you make for 2018, don’t let those goals fall by the wayside. However, that’s easier said than done considering only 9.2 percent of people actually believe their resolutions are successful. With the right tools and a steadfast drive for excellence, you can avoid falling into that particular pitfall and meet your marketing benchmarks this year.
