The Fourth of July weekend is upon us, which in business means we have just crossed over to the second half of the year – time to evaluate if you are on track to meet your sales goals or not. Either way, there are marketing decisions to be made.

In sports, halftime is a break in the action to help teams regroup and realign their strategy. A smart coach will come up with a plan for his team to beat the competition before the game begins. Halftime is time to evaluate whether that plan is working or not. That requires honest answers to two questions:

1. Are we winning or losing?

2. What is making either of those things happen?

Let’s take a look at these scenarios from a good and bad coaching perspective. It is incomprehensible that a coach would not know the score of the game at halftime, much like it would be hard to imagine a business owner not knowing what their sales totals were for the year. However, there are other measurables that will go unnoticed by a bad coach, while the good coach will take note and correct the problem at halftime. For instance, how are individual competitors doing? Is there one person who is pulling more than their weight that is skewing the accomplishments of the team? If that person gets injured, what then?

When marketing is working correctly, it helps to measure the wins and the losses. Each marketing action should be assigned goals. Those goals might be to move a prospect to being a customer or a new customer to purchase from you again until they become a lifelong, brand-loyal customer. If you are meeting sales goals, but you are not able to get any traction with your target audience through your latest marketing efforts, don’t ignore the problem. The good marketer will make the adjustment to their strategy.

If you are winning, what will the good and bad coach say?

Bad Coach: I have a brilliant strategy, just keep it up and we will win the game!

Good Coach: What we did in the first half worked, but I anticipate the other team will make changes. The same things we did to get the lead may not work as well in the second half. Here is what we will do to counter their second half changes.

Marketing is very much like this, and the halfway point of the year is a good time to measure your success or your failure and make the necessary changes for the second half of the year. Here is something the smart marketer has to keep an eye on: people’s likes and dislikes change. What you did to capture their attention once upon a time won’t work forever. Have you ever heard a clever marketing campaign that really captured your attention? How many times did you have to hear it before you stopped listening to it? My point is this: marketing has a shelf life. Your halftime evaluation should help you determine if yours is nearing its expiration date.

What if you are losing? What does the halftime speech sound like then?

Bad Coach: Just try harder *#@#!

Good Coach: Where are they beating us and what do we need to do to counter what they are doing so we can win in the second half?

Most of the time when you make adjustments to your marketing, you are not overhauling the system. There is a difference between tweaking and blowing something up! Little changes in the right area can have a big impact on your marketing.