Daily Lab: Is your new strategy working?

When you launch a new marketing strategy, how do you know if it’s working?

Marketing takes time to work, and there’s a moment in time when you’re working, but you aren’t sure if it’s working.

So how can you stay patient—or make necessary changes—when the signals of success are so delayed?

Well, how could you tell if a strategy wasn't working even if you couldn’t see the actual results yet?

You’d first look at whether it’s being implemented at all. A strategy that isn’t being worked on can’t work, so you know it’s not a good strategy if it’s sitting on a shelf or at the bottom of a to-do list.

Is yours?

Next, you’d check in with the people implementing it (if they are). Do they hate it? Is it increasingly expensive to maintain? Is it dreadfully boring or chaotically stressful? If the answer to any of those is yes, then the answer to “is it working?” is no. Because it won’t work for much longer.

So, do you like your strategy?

Because, if you’re not working on it—or you hate working on it—it’s not going to work.

But, if you’re working the strategy, and you enjoy it, you’ll able to do something others can’t:

You can improve it, because you’re sticking with it.

Marketing rarely works on the first try, and nothing ever goes exactly as planned.

But if you like your strategy, if you’re working on it, and if you’re giving it the time, resources, and enthusiasm it requires to get better and better and better every day…

Then it can’t help but work.

Because you like the work.

Read more: Are you DEWing it?