Going skydiving might be the biggest calculated risk you can take. One gust of wind, missed calculation or unprepared detail, and the results could go from good to bad, quickly.
Now, marketing isn't life or death, but it still comes with its own set of risks. Will customers engage with what we created? Have we placed the content where customers will find it valuable? What's going on in the news that could impact how our message will be received?
Whether you're going skydiving or planning your marketing efforts, you are going to want to decide whether you want to be responsible for each step or if you want to have a professional take control of the details - planning, creating, and analyzing.
Pick your landing spot
Before you book your skydiving adventure, you're going to want to pick where you ultimately want to land. The same is true with marketing. What do you want to achieve? Do you want to attract new customers to your website? Announce a new offer to existing customers? The more specific you are the better prepared you'll be.
You'll also want to check other variables that could impact the outcome. For skydiving this would include things like the weather, and for marketing it's more about reviewing past performance, industry trends, and what's going on in the news to make sure your message is going to add value to the situation.
Prepare your gear
When packing a parachute you don't want to ball it up and throw it in the bag. There are best practices to make sure it opens properly. This is also true when creating your marketing content. For example, Facebook content is great for short-form content like videos and infographics, while on LinkedIn you'll want to focus more on educational content like blogs, eBooks, etc.
Get cleared for take-off
Just like how you're going to need to get buy-in from the pilot of the plane and air traffic control before you take off, you're also going to need to make sure your teammates know what's happening so they're prepared for the additional activity. You don't want to have all of these qualified leads coming in and your sales team is not ready to help them. Or, your web team hasn't had a chance to push the supporting content live. Plus, they can all support the message on their social media pages and in their conversations with other customers.
Take a leap
Once everyone internally is ready, you can push your new marketing content live. This could be when you send the email, post a video on social media, publish your Google Ad, and more.
There will be a short time when you're content is in a free fall with no analytics coming in yet to help guide you to your landing spot. But, eventually you'll pull the ripcord and key metrics, like a parachute, that will help inform what you'll do next in order to achieve your objective.
Nail the landing
Once you land at your destination, and the marketing campaign is over, you'll have a great story to tell. Be sure to summarize what you learned and share the results with your stakeholders.
If you'd like to have an experienced marketing professional by your side to help with these details and more, let's set up an initial meeting to talk about what you want to achieve.
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