Marketing Self-Assessment
A practical workshop to identify opportunities
📣 📈 🤝
(also brought to you by AI)
Today's Roadmap
⚠️ Disclaimer
Every business here is unique. We’ll aim for broadly useful guidance, but there will always be edge cases—use judgment and adapt to your context.
What We'll Cover
- Channels 101
- What the customer journey really is
- What actually matters to measure
- Where to invest your budget
- How to score your marketing today
- Exercise and share-out
FAQ #1: What Are the Core Marketing Channels?
Owned / “free”
- Website / Technical SEO (distinct from Offpage/PR)
- SEO / GEO (Local)
- Content (onpage) + Community/Forums
- Cold outbound (email, SMS, LinkedIn, calls)
- Warming (newsletter, etc.)
Paid (You Rent)
- Intent vs Awareness
- PPC (Google, Microsoft, Yelp)
- Awareness / Display
- Affiliate / Influencer
Earned / Offline
- Reviews
- PR
- Non-digital advertising (billboards/OOH, radio, etc.)
- Events / Speaking / Conferences
The Customer Journey: Where Do Channels Fit?
Aware → Consider → Convert → Retain → Advocate
- Aware: PR, Events/Speaking, OOH/Non-digital, Awareness/Display, Influencer/Affiliate
- Consider: Content (onpage) + Community/Forums, Website/Technical SEO + GEO
- Convert: Intent PPC (Google/MS/Yelp), Offer pages, Email capture + welcome
- Retain: Email/SMS lifecycle (warming), Community, Events
- Advocate: Reviews, Referrals, UGC prompts
Measure Everything, Pay Attention to What Matters
It's all about ROI
- Directly attributable, indirectly attributable, and unattributable
- LTV / CPA = ROI
- Look for leading indicators (leads, session time, search volume)
- MUST be customized to your business (sales cycles, LTV, etc.)
Keep it Simple
- Traffic & intent: organic sessions, branded search, time on page
- Acquisition: CPA/CPL, ROAS, impression share
- Engagement: CTR, saves/shares, email open/click, unsub
- Conversion & revenue: conversion rate, pipeline sourced
Guardrails
- Attribution is imperfect—look for directional signals
- Pick 1–2 leading indicators per channel (30–90 days)
FAQ #3: How Much Should We Invest?
Starting Split (adapt as you learn)
- 60% proven channels (search + email + your top converter)
- 30% experiments (new audiences/creatives, 1–2 new channels)
- 10% R&D (big swings you’ll kill or scale)
Cadence
- Weekly: check pacing & creative fatigue
- Monthly: scale winners, cut losers, add one experiment
Always Be Testing
- Some tests are free (copy, CTAs, offers, UX)
Exercise: Self-Evaluation
- Get in groups of three
- 2 min to write down a picture of what channels you use
- 2 min to roughly estimate LTV, CPA, ROI, and ROAS (pick one line or focus)
-
2 min to score yourself 0–5 on each channel for:
- Use — how much do you use this channel?
- Relevance — is this the right channel?
- Efficiency — how well do you use this channel?
- Effectiveness — informed by the prior 3, usually an average
- Overall score — the average of all effectiveness scores
- 4 min to have group opportunity gap assessment
Note: Don't aim for perfect. Estimation is fine.
Share-Outs & Discussion
- Who scored 4–5 on effectiveness? What's working?
- Anyone at 0–1? What's not working?
- Any value gaps or data leaks? Where is data missing?
- Next steps?
Key Takeaways
Remember
Map Channels to Customer Journey
Measure Everything, Prioritize 1–3 Metrics
Focus on Value Gaps and Data Leaks to Make Informed Decisions
Want these slides?
VistageTech.com
1 / 9