When was the last time you really took stock of all the ways you can reach your audience? This week, I want to encourage you to take some time to audit your marketing channels and outreach lists. The goal is to assess where you stand and take a look at what works and what doesn’t. Sometimes this information can be scattered across the organization, creating unnecessary obstacles. However, having a centralized place where team members can easily review marketing channels can help streamline future projects.
Here are three steps to get started:
- List
- What are your current marketing channels? How big are they? Do you have them listed somewhere internally?
- Consider your website, social media accounts, newsletters, live events, printed content, SMS, push notifications, paid ads, radio/podcasts, direct mail and more.
- What are your current marketing channels? How big are they? Do you have them listed somewhere internally?
- Analyze
- How are you tracking your performance? What metrics do you have available?
- Are there any glaring gaps? Do you need to set up any analytics or revive a comms channel that was previously abandoned? Are there ways you can be more efficient?
- Do you use tracking links for marketing campaigns? How do you SEO optimize your website?
- Review
- Which channels work best for you? Why?
- Which channels don’t work? Why? Are they worth your time? Are they serving your goals?
REVIEW YOUR OUTREACH LISTS
Next, let’s think about your outreach lists, including audiences who opted in to receive marketing updates, partners, community organizations, influencers and more.
- Consider
- What kind of close partnerships do you have? How often do you engage with those people? Do you have a central place for that information so the entire newsroom can access it?
- What about community businesses or community influencers?
- What are some of the relationships your organization wants to build?
- Share
- After spending some time on this exercise, share this with your team or colleagues. Being transparent in this process can inspire teams to be more aware of your outreach efforts.
