Happy New Year! As the celebrations die down and you return to work, it’s time to focus on your top priorities for your marketing department in 2016. From entering the new year with a sense of purpose to making sure your team is prepared for new marketing opportunities, there are plenty of ways to brush up your team’s performance in the coming year.
In 2016, direct your efforts in towards these three initiatives:
These days, marketing success means next to nothing if it can’t be proven with data. And proving marketing success cannot be achieved without a robust system for data collection and analysis. How can you improve these aspects of your operations in 2016?
Perhaps it’s time to invest in a marketing automation tool that can offer further insights by producing reports that display all the information you need in one place. If you already have such tools in place but still want better data analysis, it may be time to invest in better data analysis, either via new employee hires or through an agency. Then, work with the sales team to combine marketing and sales reporting efforts, bringing together insights from both teams so that they can be usefully visualized together.
Is your team up to speed on the latest trends, technology and best practices in B2B marketing? Since it’s an ever-changing field, we’re guessing they could use a regular refresher, and the beginning of the year is the perfect time to start.
Don’t approach marketing learning haphazardly. Instead, set goals for your department in the coming year, including what skills you’d like the team to polish, what new tech tools you’d like them to learn and more. Then, draft and refine an actionable plan to impart all of these lessons. Make sure your plan fits into your team’s schedule and does not interfere with other marketing must-dos so that it is more likely to succeed.
Even the strongest marketing departments can benefit from assessing strategies and results, and getting an outside opinion on how they could be stronger. In 2016, explore ways your department might benefit from an outside contribution.
The type of work your organization needs from a partner firm will depend on your own internal resources and goals. For example, for some organizations, a partner marketing firm can offer access to people with specialized skills, such as data analysts, that the marketing team at the organization itself may not be able to bring to their own staff in a full-time capacity. For other organizations, a partner firm can serve as an outside consultant for strategic direction and advice. Whatever your needs, it’s worth exploring your options in 2016.
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