APE APE Issue 0519 | Page 14

MARKETING MATTERS Prepping Your Marketing for the Busy Season MONICA PITTS s your busy season draws near, now is the time to make sure you have all your ducks in a row to keep your business’s marketing moving smoothly through the coming months. 1. Review The Big Picture If you don’t have any marketing goals yet, maybe now’s the time to make them! Identify where your going as a www.callape.com business, what your marketing strategy is to get there, and who you're trying to reach with your marketing. Keep this big picture, you’ll review the fine points of your plan in step 3. 2. Set Benchmarks Marketing review without bench- marks is like limbo without a pole. You won’t know if you made it to the next round if you don’t measure. But, what [14] metrics prove if your marketing is work- ing or not? Start at the top - your big money benchmark to track marketing performance is, you guessed it, sales. Then dig deeper - review your building metrics - this benchmark data lets you know things are building in the direc- tion you want to go. I call building met- rics because they should almost always be increasing: website visits, website leads, inbound phone calls, clicks on 1.800.210.5923