185: Quarterly Check-In: Assessing What Worked and What Didn’t in Q1 with Host Kendra Corman

In this episode of Imperfect Marketing, host Kendra Corman delves into the crucial practice of conducting a quarterly check-in. This episode focuses on evaluating the first quarter's successes and shortcomings, highlighting the importance of this process in fostering business growth and improvement.

Key Points Covered in This Episode:

Assessing Key Metrics: Kendra emphasizes the importance of analyzing hard numbers like lead generation conversion rates, email list growth, overall sales, and progress towards annual projections. Celebrating positive metrics and identifying strong performers for the next quarter is crucial.

Identifying Underperformers: The episode guides listeners through auditing underperforming aspects, such as website pages with high bounce rates, email funnels with drop-offs, and low-ROI social ads. Kendra advises on tweaking messaging and relaunching strategies for better results.

Operational Challenges and Solutions: Kendra shares insights on identifying operational bottlenecks that may have slowed down progress. She discusses the importance of correcting systemic issues to transform future execution strategies.

Kendra's approach to quarterly check-ins, inspired by the Full Focus Planner, includes celebrating wins, reviewing goals, and making necessary adjustments. She encourages flexibility and objective, metrics-driven analysis to optimize strategies moving forward. Listeners are invited to share their insights and learnings from their Q1 evaluations.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:28

Hello and welcome back to the Imperfect in Marketing podcast. I'm your host, kendra Corman. Can you believe we are wrapping up the first quarter? Time flies when you're having fun, so today I want to do a quarterly check-in, assessing what worked beautifully these past 90 days and what either completely flopped or maybe needed some tweaks. Evaluating results and surfacing operational bottlenecks is how we level up each quarter. So let's reflect on wins, misses and everything in between. What cranked your revenue numbers last quarter and what requires re-strategizing? So let's find out.

Speaker 1: 1:08

When reexamining the first quarter, I first look at the hard numbers, right. What were my lead gen conversion rates? What was my email list growth? What were my overall sales and how far did we go towards our annual projections? I want you to celebrate any metrics that indicate positive traction worth doubling down on for the next quarter. Celebration is a key part of everything that we need to do to reward ourselves and have a positive outlook to keep ourselves moving forward.

Speaker 1: 1:43

Maybe some downloadable templates saw high conversion, directing cold traffic into your funnel fairly quickly. Or certain lead magnets might have attracted your ideal customer subscriber consistently right. Replace specific email sequences or campaigns that are driving clicks and engagement. Then I want you to look at the underperformers. I audit my website pages with high bounce rates. Unless it's designed to have a high bounce rate. I look at my email funnels to see where people falling off. You can look at social ads that have a low return on investment. Diagnose why that messaging didn't resonate. Tweak it and maybe relaunch it next quarter.

Speaker 1: 2:32

Operationally, were there some manual things that slowed you down, that got in your way that you need to delegate or create automation around? Did you overwhelm your bandwidth with taking on too much? I can tell you. Been there, done that, have the t-shirt. But correcting these systemic issues transforms your future execution. So be on the lookout for what took a lot of your time.

Speaker 1: 2:58

When I do my quarterly check-ins, I usually follow my full focus planner and the framework that they have. I start with celebrating my wins, like maybe a launch, exceeded enrollment goals or a new lead magnet is capturing contacts at a faster rate than anything else. Quantify your results. Then I review my Q1 goals. If I am for 30% growth on my list email list, but I only achieved 15%, why Seemed with missed sales targets or low turnout for a big promotional campaign, I know. I know what worked, what I want to repeat and maybe my optimized Facebook nurturing sequence or consistent value focused on Instagram content, right, what failed miserably? That's going to require a little bit of a scrub or some tweaks for quarter to and ineffective freebie, maybe an opt-in offer, wasting add dollars or a webinar with dismal sign-ups. I've had them all right.

Speaker 1: 4:02

If I set unrealistic, realistic annual projections, given the traction that I'm picking up in the first quarter, this is where I have the opportunity to course correct. You want to be flexible. My aim of adding a hundred thousand email subscribers might be adjusted down to 75,000 because of current conversion data, or I might decide okay, this didn't work, now I have to rev up and make up for it in quarter two. You don't have to course correct and change your goals, but again take a look at where you're tracking so that you're not setting yourself up for failure out the get-go. But I use my full focus planner which again hashtag, not sponsored to guide objective metrics driven analysis on positives and pitfalls For the previous quarter and then optimize my strategy moving forward with these insights. I Truly love this tool for product productive review.

Speaker 1: 4:59

Checking in quarterly also provides an invaluable perspective revealing what's excelling, what requires Restrategizing as a car as my company evolves right. Consistent evaluation is key for improvement, so tell me what major ahas or insights surfaced when you analyze your Q1 traction. Be sure to share it with me. I'd love to hear now. We just covered everything from celebrating wins, which is one of the most important things you can do in your quarterly review, to diagnosing any weak spots in your quarterly results and your strategy. Optimize and Organize your own quarterly review. You can go ahead and grab my free principal template over at Kendra Corman comm slash quarter. Until next time, have a great rest of your day. You.