Looking Back to Move Forward: Making 2019 Marketing Resolutions

There’s nothing like a brand new year to help reinvigorate your marketing game. A truly fresh start requires putting cynicism aside. It means looking back methodically at the past year to identify what worked and what didn’t to prioritize your efforts in the months to come.

You’re missing the point if you view this as just an exercise. Going through the motions won’t get you the prospects and the referrals you need to succeed. And, it won’t improve the way you work.

At the highest level, there are four key areas of your 2018 performance to examine before planning for 2019:

1. Sales goals.

• Number of new listings
• Number of new prospects
• Number of converted prospects
• Number of successful closings
• Number of client referrals resulting in qualified customers
• Number of successful co-branded marketing engagements
• Number of professional referrals resulting in qualified customers
• Sales volume and total commissions as percentage of total sales

While sales numbers reveal a lot, they don’t reflect all the critical areas that impact your overall marketing performance.

2. Marketing channel utilization. Measuring the effectiveness of electronic and traditional marketing collateral and utilization of all marketing channels will improve, and even streamline, your overall marketing strategy and tactics.

• Marketing to prospects
• Marketing to active customers
• Marketing to closed customers
• Marketing to referral partners
• Website utilization – Number of converted prospects, SEO, additions to client database
• Utilization of social media marketing – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Yelp, Zillow, Trulia, etc. Number of new followers that became clients or referral partners
• Networking events attended and number of connections made
• Community involvement

3. Organization. Your time is precious. Left unplanned it is easily wasted. Good time management is a balance between the allocation of time for specific tasks and the ability to respond effectively when something unplanned arises. How much time did you allot for the following, daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, as applicable:

• MS Outlook or other scheduling application
• Maintaining your customer database
• Returning emails
• Returning phone calls
• Time spent on social media marketing

4. Professional growth. What have you done in the past year to further your knowledge both professionally and personally?

• Seminars attended
• Course work completed
• Reading, both professional and personal
• Mentoring

Once you’ve gauged your past performance you can plan improvements for particular areas. Reviewing should be more than an annual event, though. A monthly or quarterly review gives you the chance to make adjustments in realtime.

The strength and effectiveness of your marketing efforts are dependent on your commitment to refining your message, creating a compelling call to action, and delivering on the promises you’ve made to your clients and referral partners. In other words, you can’t make meaningful marketing resolutions for 2019 without a taking a serious look at the past year.