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How do you maximize your marketing Return On Investment
in your business? Are you challenged to respond in quantifiable
terms and with credibility?
The current economic climate demands that marketing costs
be justified or risk being deemed "non-essential".
While most companies are scaling back, there is no better
time to establish or refresh your company's brand and capture
significant mindshare. Competition is less visible and there
is an expectation of getting back to business basics. Good
marketing is not about glitz and glamour but capturing what
is important to your customers. Marketers must make tough
decisions on where to spend limited funds to get the biggest
return. To make the best decisions, arm yourselves with
the complete picture.
Analyze the total cost of marketing and its return to the
bottom line. Four major expense buckets to evaluate and
determine the value to your business:
Fixed — people, benefits, office overhead
Programs — seminars, customer, partner
Promotion — web, ads, direct mail, trade
shows, sponsorship
Knowledge — research, training
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Do you have a method to capture the value of each marketing
activity or at least a point of reference? Key elements
include new leads, orders, customer quotes, and web hits.
Evaluating your marketing effort and its impact on your
business is essential in prioritization of limited resources.
What about the intangibles? The challenge of any good marketer
is placing value on activities that do not have direct quantifiable
value. The first step is to demonstrate an understanding
of your customer and what matters to them. Here's a novel
idea- why not ask them? And document it!
Ask your sales channel. Have you armed your sales channel
with the right stuff to be successful? Do they know how
to position the key selling points of the product and service?
Do they have business case models to prove in the economics?
Do they receive comments about the website? About the competition?
Establish a feedback mechanism with the sales channel and
demonstrate that you have listened with representative follow
up actions.
Learn and adapt your resource allocation based on valuable
customer and sales channel feedback. Decisions are best
made with the complete picture and tough decisions demand
it.
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