Now that you’re set to end the year strong and have started looking ahead to next year, it’s an important time to assess all that has transpired over the past 12 months. Your food and drink business or destination has embraced a content marketing strategy, so it’s time to see how successful it was. Measuring how successful your content marketing efforts were over the course of a year is an integral part of your marketing strategy. This allows you to observe trends within your business, consider what worked, identify what did not work and make changes for next year. Knowing these key items not only helps you decide on a budget and create goals but also enhances the work environment for your employees as well.
Assessing your year is both objective and subjective. It involves looking at measureable data as well as more intangible things such as team and customer satisfaction, communication and more. Below are four assessment items to get you started.
Sales
This is a very measurable action item and a great place to start. Gather data on your yearly sales and compare it to data from past years. What is the total value of new business acquired during this year? How many sales leads did you have, and how many sales were closed? This will give you a framework to assess your overall business for the year and will also indicate whether your culinary content marketing efforts are working.
Marketing
As there are many avenues for food and drink content marketing efforts, begin by categorizing your different areas (such as website and social media). Observe your inbound website traffic over the past 12 months. Has it increased? Decreased? What sites make up your top 10 sources for traffic?
Check on the performance of individual advertising and marketing campaigns. How did your audience respond to them? What was the click-through rate? Which campaigns had the most leads?
Last, keep records on the growth of your social media networks. This will help you know where your audience is, what they respond to and how to cater your future blog content so it is received.
Team Performance
Once you’ve assessed external data, it’s time to take a look at internal performance. Has your team been productive over the year? Are they achieving their goals? A great way to connect with your team is to offer a satisfaction survey and see what feedback you receive. Once you know what processes work and do not work for your employees, you can begin adjusting company structure to create a workflow that is beneficial and more effective for everyone. Happy employees are more productive, which is always good for business!
Customer Satisfaction
Check in with your customers. Data such as sale leads, sales closed, profits, inbound traffic and social media growth are all indicators of customer interest and satisfaction. Consider new ways to connect with Today’s Consumer in the coming year. Be a business that listens by offering customer satisfaction surveys. And brainstorm ways to adjust your marketing strategy so that the feedback you receive from customers is reflected in the content you create.
It has been a great year, and next year will be even better. Here are a few resources to help you as you assess your year, tweak your marketing strategy, refine your budget and create goals for the coming year so you are set up for success!
Dish Works can help you in the coming year with content creation, food and drink photography, food and drink video content, recipe development, podcasting and website creation. Learn more on our website.
Photos: Picjumbo