Day 25: Set a Timeline

Day 25 of 30. Let’s talk about timing. How long should you give a campaign before you call it quits? How long should you give your marketing plan and strategy before you call it quits or change it?

First off, I want to talk about scale of time and how long a thing should last before you know another thing and are able to act on it. So if you are running a campaign, sometimes it’s okay to set a parameter on a change. Let’s say you’re running an AB test. It might only take a week for you to know something- it depends on traffic volume. If you’re running a large strategy or you are implementing some major systems, give that stuff 6 months. Let it kind of settle. You’re going to be making some changes in the market, you’re going to be making changes to your strategy and your operations.

Have a reasonable timeline, but have a timeline. Set some ideas with you, with your team, write it down if it’s just you. If you’re working with an agency, have some set standards like, “I wanna see some movement on these things within a month, two weeks, six months, a year.” Whatever it might be. It depends on the depth of relationship you have with an agency, but if you are holding an agency accountable to a bottom line and you’re looking at ROI, you’ve gotta give that type of engagement a longer time than you would say, some smaller changes. Other sorts of small interactions might only take a couple of weeks maybe. If you’re gonna throw out some AB Facebook campaigns, for instance, you’re gonna know pretty quickly what’s working and what’s not. 

So my encouragement here, and kind of a rule I live by, is I do not agree to open-ended relationships where you say, “let’s just see where this goes.” That’s not good. You want to be able to say, here is a definitive timeline, we’re gonna open this project, we’re gonna open this thing and it’s gonna run for 6 months and then we’re gonna reevaluate. So you put all of that into a calendar, and now you’re on the same page and you’re actually working cohesively with your team. Anyways maybe that will give you some ideas as you’re working with your team, as you’re working through some of your campaigns. 

Set a timeline. It’s a real good practice. 

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