To be really successful in business today you need to establish business goals for your entire organization. This may sound easy, but it is often misunderstood, or totally forgotten. The goals must be specific and customer focused so you can monitor and measure the results. Without being able to measure the results you have no clue if you are meeting your goals.
Too often I hear flooring businesses say they have a website because they have too. I also see a lot of stores that just follow the group and have the cookie-cutter website offered by their major supplier or buying group, even though they are all in different marketplaces. Worse, these websites are never updated by the stores themselves to reflect their goals and specific customer informational needs, which means you have no effective way of measuring the website against your goals.
I also have seen this with some flooring blogs. They have a 3rd party creating and posting all the blog content for them. Unfortunately, the 3rd party often times has no idea what your goals are, what exactly is your product mix, nor do they understand the true informational needs of your targeted buyers. This means you are doing it because someone said you should, but you have no involvement or idea if it’s really helping meet your goals or having a positive effect on your bottom line. So why are you still doing it?
If you have not established any goals for this business year you should really take the time to list your key business goals. Then make sure everyone in the organization is aware of them and is striving to achieve them.
For example:
Let’s pretend your business is split 40-60 between residential replacement business and commercial work. One of your goals could be for 2012 you are going to increase your overall residential replacement sales by 15%. That goal is measurable and can also be used to help decide on your marketing strategies. Now look at what are the informational needs of the residential replacement buyers in your trading area. What are the most effective ways (media channels) to reach them? What are the costs associated? Knowing the goal and your targeted customers’ informational needs you can now start to formulate the editorial content you will need for print, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, blog, website, pay-per-click advertising, etc. Along with this you can create Call to Actions, such as: “Download our Before You Buy Checklist”, “Download this coupon” and tracking new replacement order transactions. These will help you measure if the customers are getting engaged and if you are you staying on track to meet your goal.
In the current economic environment businesses need to set goals, understand their customer’s informational needs and use their websites, social media, blogs and offline media channels towards achieving those goals. It is not too late to set your goals for 2012 and establish how you will measure them. Then examine your current online and offline content marketing to see if it is inline with your goals and with your customers’ informational needs. Also, look for new, cost-effective ways to reach and fulfill the informational needs of your targeted customers and help meet your goals, such as writing a column for a local paper, blog, or Facebook page.
If you don’t have the time then you should look to outsource the content publishing. Preferably, look for a company that already knows your industry and knows your customer informational needs. Be sure they fully understand your goals and there is a written agreement which describes exactly what they are doing for you along with an editorial publishing calendar. Also, establish how you and they will measure the results against your goals. Last, someone within your organization should read before hand everything they are going to publish for you.
If you are want to learn more about how to grow your business in this new marketing age I recommend you read: Get Content, Get Customers – turn Prospects into Buyers with Content Marketing, by Joe Pulizzi and Newt Barrett.It might be the best $12.90 you spend all year.
