​​5 Ways to Organize Your Marketing and Advertising Efforts

How do you organize your marketing and advertising efforts? Do you have a plan, or are you just flying by the seat of your pants? If you're like most business owners, you probably don't have a solid marketing strategy in place. Lacking a plan can lead to a lot of wasted time and energy. This post will discuss five ways to organize and maximize your marketing and advertising efforts. Implementing these tips will help you achieve greater focus and success with your online marketing campaigns.

Step 1: Assess Your Current Marketing and Advertising Campaigns

The first step is to look at your current marketing and advertising campaigns. Make a list of everything you're currently doing related to marketing or advertising, including posting content to your website, email marketing, running Google Ads, posting to social media, or any money you're spending.

Ask yourself these questions:

• What is working? Where do you see results? Maybe your customers respond to your monthly email. Or perhaps you get decent traffic to your website from your Facebook posts.
• What isn't working? Where are you not seeing results? For example, you're spending $3,000/month on Google Ads but not getting quality conversions.
• Where is my money going? If you're spending 90% of your budget on billboards, which I hope you're not, make sure you review the effectiveness of your billboard strategy. Are you getting new customers from your billboards, or is it just something your company has always purchased?
• Where is my time going? If you're spending 5 hours each week creating beautiful social media posts, but you only have eight followers, then you might need to rethink your strategy. Focus your time on efforts that get results.

Answering these questions will help you determine where you should focus your efforts.

Think of this as spring cleaning. If you find something in your attic that you haven't used in 5 years, you can probably throw it away or take it to Goodwill. The same goes for marketing. If you're not seeing results with a specific campaign, if something has been on autopilot for months or years, or if you're not happy with a vendor, it's probably time to hit the pause button and try something new.

Step 2: Find a Focus with Niche Marketing

Now that you've taken a hard look at your current marketing efforts, it's time to focus on your marketing strategy. One way to do this is to focus on niche marketing.

Niche marketing is targeting a specific market segment with a tailored marketing message.



You want to grow your business, and most people think targeting everyone is the best strategy. I made this mistake when I started my marketing business. I just wanted more clients, and I didn't care who it was.

I quickly learned that it's much better to focus on a specific market segment or industry and craft a marketing message that resonates with them. You will be more successful in attracting new customers, and you won't be wasting your time and resources marketing to people who will never buy from you.

To get started with niche marketing, you need to identify your target market. Ask yourself these questions:

• Who is my ideal customer?
• What are their needs and wants?
• What are their pain points?
• How can I help them solve their problems?

Once you've answered these questions, you'll have a better idea of whom you should target with your focused marketing strategy.

Step 3: Create a Content Calendar

Before getting into the content calendar, let me define "content." Content is anything you create to market your business. Here are a few examples:

• Blog Posts
• YouTube Videos
• Social Media Posts
• Podcast Episodes
• Email Marketing Campaigns
• Direct Mail Campaigns

One of the best ways to get organized with your marketing is to create a content calendar. A content calendar is simply a way to plan your content marketing efforts.

Creating and following a content calendar will help you stay on track with your marketing goals and ensure that you're consistently creating new content. It will also help you avoid the last-minute scramble to come up with something to post.

There are a few different ways you can create a content calendar. You can use a Google Calendar, Excel spreadsheet, or a good old-fashioned paper calendar. Whichever method you choose, make sure it's something you'll use and update regularly. Check out our free content calendar template.

Create content for your niche

Create content specifically for your niche. Once you've chosen a format for your content calendar, start by brainstorming ideas for new content. Keep in mind step 2, where we defined a niche audience.

If you're stuck, think about topics that would be helpful to your target market or popular trends in your industry. Or go and see what your competitors are doing to give you a starting point. Then, start filling in your calendar with specific dates and deadlines for each piece of content.

Give yourself plenty of time to hit your deadlines, and try not to overload yourself with too much work at once. You'll get frustrated and go back to the old way of doing things.

A content calendar aims to get your content marketing organized and help you focus on creating content for your niche audience.

Step 4: Set Up a System to Track Your Results

You've taken a hard look at your marketing strategy, defined a focused niche for your efforts, and created a content calendar to keep you on track. Now it's time to set up a system to track your results.

This step is crucial because it will help you see what's working and what's not to allow you to adjust your strategy accordingly.

Whichever method you choose, make sure you're consistently tracking your results and checking in regularly.

Track content marketing results

If you're a content creator, you'll want to track views and interactions to know what kind of content your audience interacts with the most.

For bloggers, I recommend setting up Google Analytics. You can track how long someone stayed on your site and how many people viewed each of your posts.

I also recommend setting up Google Search Console for your website so you can track organic keywords leading to your website. Google Search Console will give you data on how people search for your company online and find you. You can even link Google Search Console to your Google Analytics account, so you only have to deal with one program. Here's a support document on how to link these accounts.

You can also go deeper by tracking keywords with a paid program like ahrefs or SEMRush. SEMRush will tell you how your content ranks organically on Google and ideas on new content to help you rank for more keywords.

For social media posters, most of the top platforms will give you some data related to your posts. You can see which type of posts yield the most views and likes and, ultimately, which ones lead to the most interaction with your followers.

Remember that our goal is to help you stay organized and on track. Keep tracking simple, but make sure you know how your efforts are performing so you can stop wasting time creating content that isn't driving results and double down on anything that is getting you business.

Track conversions for ad campaigns

One of the most important things you can do to track your advertising efforts is to set up conversion tracking for your ad campaigns. Conversion tracking will help you see how many leads or sales you're generating from each campaign to determine which ones are worth your time and money. Here's a post on setting up conversions in Google Ads.

Stay focused on the campaigns that are working and reallocate your budget from underperforming campaigns to those driving leads.

Step 5: Create a Lead Tracking System

If you're in the business of selling services, then you'll want to set up a lead tracking system. Tracking and prioritizing your leads will help you keep track of your sales pipeline and see which marketing efforts are generating the most leads.

Here are a couple of ways to set up a lead tracking system for free.

1. Set up a spreadsheet to track your leads.
2. Sign up for a free Trello account and create a lead process (recommended).

Track your leads through the sales process

Here is how I've set up my process in Trello. Each of these items is a column (aka Trello list) on a board in Trello.

Once you get a new lead, move it to the appropriate column as the sales process progresses:

• New Lead. Add all lead information, such as company name, contact name, contact information, and any notes. Consolidating lead information will help you keep everything in one place so you're not constantly going back to look at emails.
• Contact Made. Once you've reached out to the lead, make any notes about your initial call or email.
• Need Defined. Once you've spoken or emailed the customer and defined their needs, you're ready to write the proposal.
• Proposal Made. Once you've sent the proposal, note the date and any follow-up information. Add a due date when you will follow up with the prospective client.
• Need to Follow Up. If you've reached out but haven't heard back from the lead within a given timeframe, add a date that you will follow up with the customer.
• Won. Move the lead to the "won" column if you got the business. Make sure you've included how the customer reached out to you so you can know how your customer found you.
• Lost. If you didn't close the deal, add the customer to the "lost" column. Make a note of why the prospective client decided not to work with you. You can review this later to see if there is a trend of why you're not converting leads.

Now that your tracking system is in place, you can add your leads into the system and tag them with relevant information like which marketing campaign they came from, where they are in the sales cycle, and when you need to follow up next.

Don't overcomplicate this process. Just get a system in place so you can stay organized. Don't lose a lead because you lack organization. Set a strategy today.

Today is the Day to Get Organized

Here is a quick summary to jumpstart your marketing Spring cleaning:

1. Assess your current efforts and see what's working and what's not working. Stop wasting time or energy on things that don't work.
2. Choose a niche to target. Choosing a niche will help you to focus your messaging. 
3. Create a content calendar to get your content organized and create an effective marketing plan for your niche market. 
4. With all of your new efforts in progress, create a system to review your results. Don't fall back into old habits of working hard without knowing if your efforts are working. 
5. Finally, create a follow-up plan so you can track your incoming leads. Don't create a focused marketing plan without first organizing your lead nurturing strategy.

Do you need help getting organized with your marketing strategy? Contact Crosby Digital Marketing for a free marketing and advertising consultation. We help companies reach their marketing and advertising goals.