Guide — Marketing foundations
The Marketing Health Check.
Six practical checks every small to medium sized business should have in place.
When marketing isn't delivering as expected, it can be difficult to pinpoint exactly what's wrong.
Often, the answer isn't another campaign, channel or tool. It's worth going back to the fundamentals and checking that the basics are working as they should.
Use this health check to identify potential gaps and bring some clarity to where you should focus next.
01
Connect marketing to your commercial goals
Marketing goals shouldn't sit separately from the commercial goals of the business.
Start with the overall growth target and understand exactly what marketing needs to contribute towards achieving it.
- Marketing goals are directly linked to commercial goals
- Marketing understands the pipeline it needs to generate
- There is clarity around marketing generated inbound pipeline and sales generated outbound pipeline
- Marketing understands its role in generating new business and growing existing customers
- The team can connect marketing performance back to the overall commercial target
Quick check
Does marketing know the number it is responsible for contributing towards?
02
Track every lead and where it came from
Good lead tracking doesn't have to start with sophisticated automated attribution.
Even with limited tools, you can put basic tracking in place that gives you a much clearer picture of what's generating opportunities and how those leads progress through your pipeline.
- Every lead is recorded
- The original source of each lead is captured
- Lead sources are clearly defined and used consistently
- The process for moving a lead through each stage is clearly defined, including what qualifies as a Lead, MQL and SQL
- Marketing and sales understand what each stage means and when a lead should move to the next stage
Start simple. Website, organic search, LinkedIn, email, event, referral or outbound is already much more useful than having no source information at all.
The important thing is consistency. Everyone should understand what each source and stage means and use them in the same way.
Quick check
Can you see where your leads are coming from and how they're progressing through your pipeline?
03
Make your CRM your single source of truth
Your CRM should be the central place for prospect and customer information.
Avoid creating separate spreadsheets or systems that hold information that should live in your CRM. Once data becomes fragmented, getting a clear view of your pipeline and marketing performance becomes much harder.
- Prospects, leads and customers are recorded in the CRM
- Contact information is kept as complete and up to date as possible
- Lead source is recorded consistently
- Key interactions and activity are captured
- Reporting comes from the CRM rather than separate spreadsheets
Quick check
If you wanted an accurate picture of your prospects, customers and pipeline today, could you get it from your CRM?
04
Understand which content resonates
Don't just measure how much content you're producing. Understand which content your audience actually responds to.
Over time, most businesses start to identify a handful of topics, formats or pieces of content that consistently resonate with their audience. These become your hero content.
- Content and social performance are tracked
- You know which topics generate the strongest engagement
- You understand which formats work best for your audience
- High performing content is reused and repurposed
- What you learn influences your future content plan
Finding your hero content takes time and testing. Once you know what consistently works, use it.
Quick check
Do you know which content your audience comes back to again and again?
05
Learn from your email performance
Every email campaign gives you data you can use to improve the next one.
Look for patterns in what gets your audience to engage and use those insights to improve future campaigns.
- Email performance is reviewed consistently
- You track which content and topics perform best
- Subject lines are tested and compared
- A/B testing is used where appropriate
- Send times and days are tested
- Clicks and actions are reviewed alongside open rates
- What you learn is applied to future campaigns
Quick check
Is your email performance improving because of what you've learned from previous campaigns?
06
Review, learn and adjust
Collecting marketing data only has value if you use it.
Build a regular marketing review into how you work. Look at what's performing, what's not and where you need to make changes.
- Marketing performance is reviewed regularly
- A small set of meaningful KPIs is used
- Performance is reviewed against commercial goals
- Underperforming activity is identified
- Successful activity is understood and built on
- Decisions about activity, budget and resource are informed by the data
The aim isn't to produce more reports. It's to make better marketing decisions.
Quick check
What have you changed in the last three months because of something your marketing data told you?
In summary
Start with the basics.
If something in your marketing doesn't feel quite right, go back to the fundamentals.
Are your goals clear? Are you tracking your leads? Can you trust your CRM? Do you know what content works? Are you learning from your campaigns? And are you acting on what the data tells you?
Getting these foundations right gives you the clarity to identify the gaps and decide where to focus next.
Want a second pair of eyes on your marketing foundations?
A 30-minute introductory call is a good first step to talk through where the gaps are.