3 Questions to Help Evaluate Your Marketing

I know, we are oversaturated with marketing these days. Social media ads, robo-calls, TV commercials, YouTube ads, junk mail…it goes on and on. But I think it’s important to periodically evaluate how we are marketing our work – as a freelance musician, an ensemble, a presenting organization, a community music school, or something else!

These three questions can help begin that process of evaluating your marketing approach, and perhaps help you fine tune and maximize your marketing efforts:

1. Given your particular business, what is the #1 marketing method that delivers results for you? Is it word-of-mouth recommendations? Your website? Networking? What’s #2? What are the top 5? Get these down on paper so that you can look at them and make sure you are giving each the appropriate amount of attention given their return.
2. What are all the ways that you could market your work? Think about all the ways that you currently market your work – maybe that includes networking, sending email newsletters, advertising, social media posting, your website, etc. In addition to all the current things you do, what else could you do? Try not to judge the ideas as they come out – just write them down and don’t worry about how silly or irrelevant they might seem. Some of our best ideas start out that way.
3. If you are spending money on advertisements – radio, print, TV, web, Facebook – how much are you spending? What does the data show you in terms of how those ads are performing? Are you reaching your target audience(s)? Are you getting return on your investment (ROI)? Should you continue with the same advertising strategy, decrease your spending, increasing your spending, or shift to different types of ads?

Happy marketing!