Ask the right questions to uncover your marketing objectives...
Analyzing marketing performance is a key part of your marketing efforts. Tracking the responses to a campaign and analyzing its performance by utilizing valuable campaign data will drive better results.
How is the campaign performing? What is your return on investment? How much is your cost per lead? Is the campaign generating any new sales?
These questions can be overwhelming, but here are a few questions to ask yourself in order to diagnose the results of your current marketing efforts and identify areas that need improvement:
• What marketing initiatives have generated the most leads over the past few years?
• What is your conversion rate for leads to customers?
• What is the average length of a sales cycle? How are you trying to shorten this?
• Who is your target audience? Has this changed due to current economic conditions, pricing, or competition?
• How do you differ from your competitors? How do you communicate this to your customers?
• How do you grow the sales of your current customer base?
• How effective are your customer retention campaigns?
• What are the major forces driving change in your industry? How are you coping with this?
• What are the opportunities for growing your business in the future?
Asking yourself these simple questions will help you to uncover your business and marketing objectives. This exercise will allow you to figure out what is or isn’t working, what has worked in the past, and where you would like to be in the future. These questions will allow you to identify positive and negative trends in your marketing efforts, which is the key to successful marketing performance.
Keep in mind that not all feedback will be positive feedback, but it will be useful information in analyzing your marketing performance. For example, perhaps you launch a great new campaign with direct mail pieces and receive little or no response. First reaction might be to give up on direct mail because it will never work. After careful analysis you might come to realize that maybe the message or copy wasn’t conveying your company’s message. Or perhaps your mail list needs to be cleaned up or your offer didn’t resonate with the recipient.
Marketing campaigns are made up of multiple components that all need to come together in the right way in order to be effective. If you analyze and receive negative feedback…GREAT! At least it is feedback and it’s a step in the right direction to proactively managing your marketing campaigns to be as effective as they can be.
Amanda Moore
