As we ease into the third quarter of 2020, certain things should happen to ensure you are on the right track for business growth despite the current economic situation. Taking a proactive approach will help your business prevail when others flounder. Here are three marketing tips you can do this month to ensure the second half of 2020 is better than the first.

1. Use insights. More than ever, we can see how our marketing efforts are performing over prior months and years. Insights provide real-time data into the behavior and motivation of your target audience. Marketing is an investment. To ensure its’ success, you need to monitor its efficacy. Recent events have transformed marketing. The messages used in marketing have shifted to a more positive, uplifting, and supportive voice. Insights will provide data regarding how consumers are receiving your messages. If people aren’t responding to what you are putting out, your content marketing strategy should be tweaked. Understanding consumer insights will help you ensure you are getting the message your target audience wants to receive. According to Forbes, 74% of consumers get frustrated when the information served to them is personally irrelevant. Ensure your marketing is on the right track. 
2. Brainstorm ways to do things better. We love to hear about businesses that have company meetings to solicit feedback from employees on how to do things better. Employees are the people who interact with customers. Often, they have a better pulse on what is working and what isn’t. Therefore, their feedback can be extremely valuable. You can get some great ideas for what to do to outperform your competitors, while also helping employees feel more valued. Everyone wants to feel like their opinion matters. When they do, they feel more invested in an organization. Happy employees make happy customers. Work to come up with a handful of ideas you can implement during the second half of the year. 
3. Take chances. Marketing requires taking chances, especially now. But the chances you take can be based on data derived from consumer insights. Understanding what people want will help you pick and choose the tactics that have the highest potential for bringing in new customers. Marketing shouldn’t be Russian Roulette. We always recommend clients make decisions based on data. If there is no data to support the tactic, efforts should be made to allow quick pivoting if it isn’t working for your business. For example, if you consider a magazine ad, the publisher should be able to provide some data on reach. They may even have information on the kind of growth similar businesses have seen through their publication. If they can’t, don’t sign an extended contract. It can be frustrating to be locked into something that isn’t performing. This analogy carries over into virtually any tactic you could consider. Doing the same thing day in and out may work for a while, but eventually, fresh ideas will be what breathes new life into your marketing program.