Marketing Strategy 2022: How to Audit & Update Your Marketing Strategy

Is Your Marketing Strategy 2022 Ready Now?

It’s a new year! It’s time to get things organized, update your plans, and set new goals. 

For most of you, that should mean updating your marketing strategy.

But how in the world are you supposed to do that?

We’re about to show you exactly how we audit marketing strategies and update them for a new year. Come on in!

Today, we’ll be focusing on updating your marketing strategy for 2022, including; 

• What to audit and why
• How to predict digital marketing trends so you can stay ahead of the curve
• And resources you may find helpful (we focus on free or inexpensive tools) 

Let’s get started! 

Marketing Strategy 2022: Why Updating Is So Important?

“Set it and forget it” was an excellent marketing slogan, but it’s not a good marketing strategy.

Now that it’s the new year and we’ve recovered from holiday food hangovers, it’s time to regroup and kick off the year on the right foot. 

You should be updating your marketing strategy regularly. It’s a fluid thing that requires constant adjustments, even if they’re little ones.

Ideally, you’re analyzing results every month so you can make adjustments as needed. 

But you should also plan to do a yearly strategy analysis, audit, and reboot. 

Steps On How To Audit Your Marketing Strategy 2022

You need to start by looking back. It may feel strange, but you need to review what you’ve been doing before you can decide where you’re going.

That sounds very Hobbit-esque, but stick with us.

Step 1: Gather data
Step 2: Analyze the data
Step 3: Look at new trends (and outdated practices to ditch)
Step 4: Determine how you’ll define success (aka set goals)
Step 5: Make a plan (and execute it)

Step 1: Gather data

Unless this is your very first marketing strategy for a brand new business,

this entire refresh starts with data.

You can have all the fun ideas and take lots of whiskey naps during the workday

a-la Don Draper and put together gorgeous graphics…

…but if you’re not forming this using data, you’re gambling, big time. 

The kind of data you’ll want to collect will vary by platform.

We’re going to walk you through what we look for and a few questions that are important to ask.  

a. Social Media (Paid & Organic) 

For social advertising, go to the Ads Manager on all of the platforms you use and download the data for the last year.

We’re talking about everything from:

• ad spend,
• clicks,
• CTR,
• conversions,
• follows,
• engagements,

…and anything else that makes sense for your business like phone calls, leads, or messages. 

Here are a few questions to ask: 

• What was my total ad spend? How much did I make? 
• What was my most successful advertising campaign? 
• What was my least successful campaign? 

b. Email Marketing

You’ll want to log in to your email platform and navigate to the data.

This is where you’ll be able to see stats like:

• total subscribers,
• total conversions,
• your most (and least) successful campaigns,
• spam reports,

…and other info. 

Here are a few questions to ask: 

• What was the most popular email I sent out last year? 
• What was the least successful email I sent out last year? (You’ll want to analyze these emails in detail later on)
• Did my subscriber count grow or shrink? 
• Did I have any spam reports? 
• What was my bounce rate? (How many emails could not be delivered)
• What was my overall open rate?

c. Influencer Marketing

If you’re working with influencers, you’ll want to keep careful track of their campaigns as they run (ideally not just once a year).

Here are a few questions to ask: 

• How much did I pay for influencer marketing this year? 
• How much money did influencers bring in? (If you don’t know or can’t tell, you need to improve your influencer marketing strategy)
• What percentage of my business came from influencer campaigns? 
• Does it make sense to continue to pay influencers next year or can I move content creation in-house? 

d. Search Engine Marketing

How many of you are advertising on Google?

We should see more hands than this, to be honest. Google owns 92% of the search engine market (wild, right?)…

…and they own YouTube (which is actually a search engine, we know).

Those are two giant platforms you don’t want to be missing out on.

3.5 billion searches are performed daily, so your customers are out there and they’re waiting for you.

Get on it if you’re not. 

Here are a few questions to ask: 

• How many clicks did my ads get? 
• How many conversions? 
• What kind of ads worked best? 
• What kind of ads should I try this year? 

If you want to learn more about local search engine marketing, check out this post next. 

Step 2: Analyze the data

The next step in updating your marketing strategy 2022 is taking a good look at all the data you’ve collected over the year and analyzing it.

This means determining what it was that worked, what didn’t, what you spent, what you earned, and whether you should do this again. 

Some questions to ask yourself: 

1. What content performed best? What about the worst? 
2. Who was in the audience? 
3. What platforms were you using? Are they working? 
4. Did you have the resources to stick to your plan? 
5. Did any platform changes affect my ads? (i.e. lookalike audiences declining on Facebook) 

Step 3: Look at new trends (and outdated practices to ditch) 

This is one of our favorite parts. You get to start looking at new trends, updates to platforms, and compare them to what you’re doing.

Now’s the time to ditch any outdated practices you’re still using and freshen up your content creation.

We look at popular articles, Pinterest’s trend reports, news from each platform, and our favorite accounts to see what they’re doing. 

We won’t focus on specific trends in this post, but you can check out our Facebook ad trends post that we posted previously. 

Step 4: Determine how you’ll define success (aka set goals) 

Be realistic here; gaining 10,000 new followers in 3 months with zero spend is probably not going to be realistic for you.

Having a post go viral every week may not be a good goal. 

It’s better to have slower but steady growth, which you get from consistency and developing a relationship with your audience. 

If you have existing data, try to do 10% better this year than you did last year.

If you don’t have data, do a bit of Googling to find average stats or data for your industry and use that as a starting point.

Speaking of goals, be sure to read this post next to learn how to set social media goals for your business.

Step 5: Make a plan (and execute it)

Now you know what works, you know what doesn’t, and you’ve looked at your competitors.

Back to your plan, though.

You’ve also looked into new trends or strategies and audited your content so you’re not stuck in a 2012 loop.

None of us wants that. 

So, how do you put this all down in a plan?

You can type this in a doc, create a spreadsheet, write it out by hand, or whatever else works for your preferred method. 

As for us, we’d like to organize it this way: 

• What channels our client is using?
• How often we’ll be publishing?
• What budget our client has for ad spend or boosting posts?
• What budget our client has for content creation?
• What type of content we’ll be creating?
• What resources do we need to execute creation?
• Are there any other tools or resources required to get the job done?

Really quick, here’s a light warning to you: don’t skimp on gathering the tools and resources you need.

Don’t force all of this onto your plate; that will limit your ability to execute your plan and reach your goals.

There are a lot of options outside of doing it yourself that you can explore if you’re overwhelmed. 

This may look like hiring someone to help you in-house (this will mean payroll, insurance, finding and vetting employees, and training).

You could also go the freelance route if you don’t have the capacity for a full-time person.

Or, you could hire a digital marketing agency (like Lyfe) to handle it for you. 

Now You Have An Updated Marketing Strategy 2022!

Your marketing strategy 2022 can be super built out and specific, or can be a loose guide that changes every month.

It depends on your business and industry, as well as outside factors like the supply chain and time of year. 

But a marketing strategy is essential to figure out what content to make, or what ads to run, and analyze whether they’re working or not. 

Now’s the perfect time to update your marketing strategy! If you need more help with that, don’t hesitate to contact us today!

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