5 Things Successful Marketers Need to Do Every Fall

The air is beginning to get chilly and school is back! Now that September is almost over, you can stop worrying about printing direct mail postcards for last-minute Labor Day marketing and Summer sales. Since Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Eve are just around the corner, as a marketer, you are surely aware that you only have four months left to make something happen in terms of your annual plan. Don’t panic! To make your lives easier, we’ve come up with five things successful marketers get to right after the summer holiday.

If you want to truly be worthy of the term marketer, you must complete the following items within the last quarter of the year:

Item 1: Take care of the capex document, the 2017 RFP and the project brief. Bear in mind that, the sooner you sit down and take care of these far-from-exciting documents, the farther ahead of the competition you’ll be. Trust us, we understand these are often not the most interesting documents to put together. Nevertheless, we’re sure you’d prefer taking care of these documents today than during the holidays, so try to set aside some time, buckle down and get them off your bucket list. Item 2: Run that experiment you and your team have been thinking about all year long You were thrilled about this particular idea in January, but you never got around to do it for one reason or another. Fortunately, you and your team have a quarter of the year left to carry out a pilot. No more excuses – it’s time to rise to the occasion! It’s absolutely imperative to test something out before 2016 ends to kick off the next year right. Item 3: A/B tests are a must Do you want to enhance the results of the work your department does once and for all? It’s time to hit pause on any random thing that distracts you. This way, you’ll have time to run the A/B comparison tests (aka split testing) you so desperately want to do so. Whether you want to improve the results of your email, direct mail, website, PPC, social or radio spots, run those tests now to come up with some tailwind for 2017! Item 4: Come up with your ROI, especially on strategies that you want more budget for 2016. As you carefully start making a case for your budget for next year, now is the perfect time for better or increased measurement. Keep in mind that you must go above and beyond to make sure that the numbers you come up with for next year are 100% definite – these numbers should be able to do the selling for you and, more importantly, they should stand up to a budget review. Item 5: Review your editorial calendar and improve the efforts you’ve made during the last months. Don't let the team slip off the tracks as your marketing department bent over backwards in order to get content marketing efforts taken seriously and budgeted for. Make sure your efforts are strong going into the end of 2016 by boosting the consistent efforts you've made during the months of January, February, March, April, May, June, July and August or getting back to the plan. You still have time – there’s no need to panic. Just pull your team together, set a realistic plan of goals and get to work! Now that summer is over and the clock is ticking on 2016, we hope you have a productive final fourth of the year and you achieve your marketing goals! Please feel free to kindly leave your insights on the comments section below.