Auditing Your Community’s Digital Marketing Plans

The end of the year is always an exciting time in business. From holiday marketing plans to Black Friday campaigns, November & December are always jam-packed with opportunities to reach clients with lots of holiday cheer. 

I know some are anxious to jump feet first into their Q1 marketing plans. But before that can happen, we have to take stock of where we currently are with a smart marketing audit.

Keep reading to get insight on auditing this year’s marketing plans and how to find what worked (…and more importantly, what didn’t) to build a smart digital strategy for the new year.

Table of Contents

1. Assess your Analytics
2. Find Where you Failed
3. Reflect on the Market
4. Establish More Aligned Marketing Goals
5. Build your New Year Marketing Plans
6. Strategize with Smart Girl Digital

Assess Your Analytics

To begin auditing your previous years plans, you first have to reflect on what you’ve done so far. Start by assessing the data. What analytics you choose to focus on will vary from business to business but, in general, you should be tracking the following metrics:

• Website traffic – How many new & returning visitors are you getting? Organic or paid?
• Traffic sources – Where is your traffic coming from? Social? Email? Third-party content?
• Top-performing pages – What keeps people coming back for more?
• Search engine rankings – What keywords are you ranking for? Where are you falling short?
• Social following & engagement – Are you growing or staying stagnant? 
• Email performance – How many subscribers do you have? What’s your average open rate? CTR? 
• And the performance of any lead magnets and/or digital sales funnels that are active.

If you don’t have a digital partner like Smart Girl Digital who tracks these metrics monthly, most of them can be found in Google Analytics. 

Find Where You Failed

Once you have the data, take a look at your strategy for this year and ask yourself some tough questions…

1. Did you reach your overall business goals for the year?
2. How did marketing contribute to the completion of those goals?
3. Which marketing tactics were effective?
4. Which marketing tactics yielded poor results?
5. How can you invest (financially and otherwise) in the coming year to be sure you reach your business goals?

The answer to these questions, in addition to the data you acquire for the year, will determine what steps you need to take to level up in the new year.

Reflect on the Market

Once you’ve outlined where you are, it’s important to assess where the market is as well.

Let’s get real for a second…the global pandemic has put a wrench in many senior living community strategies. While occupancy is rebounding, now is the time to supercharge your digital strategy and accept how this industry has shifted as a whole.

As we noted in our blog about 6 Staggering Statistics That Support Investing in Your Digital Marketing Strategy, this year is the year to dominate on digital. 

If you haven’t already, start thinking about how you can use inbound marketing tactics to provide value and create an interactive digital experience for your prospective families. 

What marketing systems, tools, and software can you invest in to meet your clients where they are this upcoming year?

Establish More Aligned Marketing Goals

If you’ve soared on social media this year, perhaps it’s time to shift your focus to email. If your content has been spread far and wide this year, maybe think about upping your search engine stats for the next one. 

By establishing new business goals, you can allocate time, money, and resources to areas where your marketing plans fell short last year and revamp them for 2023.
When goal setting, remember to think SMART. Business and marketing goals should be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Reasonable, and Time-bound.

With this in mind, gaining 1,000,000 Instagram followers is probably not a SMART goal (unless you have $$ to invest in paid advertising). However, making the steps to pivot your systems digitally or streamline your sales and marketing alignment absolutely is.

Build Your New Year Marketing Plans

Your marketing plans for next year will depend on several factors. Without assessing your business goals during a Discovery Call, we can’t tell you exactly what to include, but here are a few elements of a smart digital strategy:

• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Social media marketing
• Email marketing
• Web design
• Content marketing
• Reputation management
• Lead generation
• Marketing automation

Again, these elements will vary from business to business, but assessing how each fits into your current strategy can help you shape a plan that works for your brand.

Strategize with Smart Girl Digital

If you have questions about how to create and implement marketing plans, strategies, and tactics, schedule a FREE call with the Smart Girl team. 

We offer free, 20-minute discovery calls with senior living operators just like yours and can help you and your team get a jumpstart on next year’s marketing plans.