When you are looking to improve how to promote your business it helps to take some time to review your current marketing efforts to understand just how effective, or ineffective, your current actions are. We call this taking ?Marketing Inventory?. Taking inventory allows you to take a critical eye to how you have been marketing your business and understand where improvements can be made.

Essentially you are looking at your marketing from a potential customer?s point of view and asking yourself if you like what you see.

Five Questions To Ask Yourself When Taking Inventory

As you conduct your marketing inventory you begin to see what is and is not working. You understand how people outside your organization view your brand and business. If that does not match up with your view of your business, then you will need to make some changes. Here are some questions to ask yourself as you take inventory:

• Who are we targeting? – Understanding your target audience is a great place to start because you want to make sure you are speaking to the individuals most likely to buy your product or hire you for your services. Look at your messaging and images and ask yourself if they are appealing to the customers you wish to attract.
• What marketing platforms are we using to share our content? – Next, take a look at what platforms are you distributing your content on. Is it where your audience is more likely to get their information?
• What types of content are we sharing? – After you understand which marketing platforms you are using, analyze the types of content you are developing and publishing. Are they appropriate for the given marketing channels? Do they address the needs of your target audience? Does the content you share properly reflect who and what your organization is and how you help your customers or clients?
• How often are we sharing content? – Next look at how often are you sharing content? Your goal should be providing enough information for your target audience to be a resource without bombarding them with too much information. If you publish a lot of long form content, then you may want to consider publishing less to give your audience a chance to consume the content. Conversely if your content is easily consumed in small chunks, then more content might be appropriate.
• What sort of engagement are we seeing? – Your goal when developing marketing content should be to get your target audience to engage with the content you are publishing. Look at the analytics of the marketing channels you are using. Note which posts are getting the most activity and try to understand what was it about the post or content that was so compelling. Also understand the content which is underperforming. Look for trends so you can better determine what content you should develop and publish in the future.
• Is our brand consistent throughout all platforms? – This is a big one. You want your organization represented the same way across all platforms. Your target should see the same logo, colors, tagline, etc. no matter if they are looking at your website, Facebook page, LinkedIn page, or just opened an email from you. You want to make sure your hours, address, phone number, email, or any other contact info is the same. If you confuse your potential customers, they will be a lot less likely to make a purchase.

As you take inventory make notes of the things that you like and the things which you do not believe are working. Create a plan to reinforce the actions which are working as well as a plan to address the things which either are not working or are not representing your brand properly. When done you will have a clear set of steps of how you can improve your marketing efforts and better position yourself and organization for success!