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There are many variables involved to running an effective marketing strategy, including the ability to understand whether a campaign has been successful and if there are tweaks that can be made further down the line. There is also a strong case for making your marketing as efficient as possible, enabling you to spend the right amount of time on the correct projects.

There are ways to make your marketing more efficient, making sure campaigns reach the right target audiences, saving time for your agency. The following tips have been devised to help you get the most out of your marketing campaigns and maximise your time. 

Set realistic goals

It’s easy to get carried away with the many different marketing methods, especially if you’re not a dedicated marketing professional. Some agents feel that a few LinkedIn PPC (pay per click) campaigns here, the odd sponsored tweet there and a purchased email list will bring instant results. 

Unfortunately, it’s never quite that simple. While factors like PPC bear weight, they need to be measured and it needs to be understood that instant results will be unlikely. The most important aspect is to manage your expectations.

Alternatively, if you decide to release a monthly newsletter featuring four or five articles, make sure you keep track of the articles and they are ready in time for the send. If they’re not, re-evaluate and ask yourself why you didn’t achieve the initial number. If you find that you’re not keeping up with initial targets, it may be that you need to change your goals or shift some aspects of your marketing around. 

Define the process

There is an element of project management that comes into play with your marketing. At the start of each year it’s important to devise a marketing calendar, pinpointing important events and making sure you have a brief outline of the different events happening throughout the year. 

You can quickly establish a process for when to market certain aspects at certain times of the year by having a calendar in place. This will make it easier to manage your marketing and to make sure you don’t miss any important events. 

Prioritise

Marketing includes a mixture of long-term campaigns and short-term reactions to topical events. 

While a dedicated long-term plan is important, you need to have flexibility to change direction if it means you can capitalise on a recent trend. 

Your marketing calendar should be catered towards a long-term plan but still have enough flexibility for day-to-day changes. Evaluate your marketing assignments and ideas, determining whether or not you will be able to change direction at short notice. 

Track your time

Whether you’re a small agency without specialised marketing staff, or you have an in-house marketing department, it’s important that you keep track of how much time is being spent and what it’s being spent on. 

Divide the time up and work out how much of it is being spent on content meetings, strategies and the actual implementation of ideas. By knowing how much time you’re spending on every aspect of your marketing, you will be clearer with everyone else’s tasks. 

Results

Make sure you calculate to see if the time you are spending on marketing activities is yielding results. If you find that certain activities are taking a considerable amount of time, yet they are achieving excellent results, the effort will have been worth it.  

If, however, you find most of your time is taken up by marketing but are seeing little in the way of results or leads, you will need to have a re-think about your marketing structure. There are tools that can help you get a better idea of how your marketing is performing.  

Make sure people are communication

It’s important to make sure there is transparency between your marketing members and that everyone knows exactly what their role is. Online collaboration tools from companies like Google or Asana help you to keep track of your tasks, as well as the tasks of your team members. 

This is helpful because everyone will know their role and will also be able collaborate on aspects of other team member’s tasks, edit documents and make changes without any confusion. It’s the easiest way to keep in control of multiple campaigns at once. 

Keep a winning formula

When you are starting a campaign, there is bound to be an element of ‘hit and miss’ to your activities as you try to find out what works and what doesn’t. Once you have found the most effective type of methods, stick with them and use them as a platform to build on.  

Develop an action plan, adding new initiatives and integrating them into your team. Then go back and look at what’s been less successful to see if there is anything that you can add from the successful plan.

Measure your efforts with data

There are many tools available, including Google Analytics, that help us to better understand our marketing efforts. Whether you’re content writing, building campaigns or doing market research, they should all be measured to see what works and what doesn’t. 

Knowing your metrics will help you achieve clarity with your campaigns. Use other tools like Rightmoveplus to see if leads have improved after recent campaigns – this will offer an understanding of how well your collateral is performing

An efficient future

By taking all of these aspects into account, you will be in a much better position to maximise your marketing. In turn, this will allow you to feel more comfortable about your agency’s strategy. Marketing is evolving, so it’s important to keep up to date with your methods, making sure they are having a positive effect. 

Having a clear and concise campaign will allow you to refocus other energies on different aspects of your agency, helping you to have a more rounded, fully processed and smoothly oiled cog. The end result will be more instructions and more leads – every agent’s main desire.