Your marketing efforts can make it rain money...
I spoke with a young lady today who spends a considerable amount of money on marketing every month. When I asked her why she invests so much in her marketing efforts her response was: “you have to market in order to grow your business.”
Great answer! I then asked her what her response rates were on those marketing efforts-but she didn’t know. I asked her what the conversion rates were from prospects into customers -again she didn’t know. Finally, I asked about her return on investment (ROI)-she had no clue!
Does this sound familiar? Many businesses spend their limited marketing budgets on campaigns while having no idea if their efforts are paying off.
“Marketing without efforts to determine what is working is no different than throwing a bunch of pasta at the wall and seeing what sticks. Defining your returns and ratios are critical in your success,” says Joe Malinowski, of Business Networking Life.
To dissect the ROI of your latest marketing campaign ask yourself the following questions:
- What campaigns or initiatives generated the most leads over the past two years?
- What is your conversion rate for leads to customers?
- What campaigns generate the most revenue for dollars spent?
- Was your marketing successful? Did you conduct a ROI analysis?
- If so, what was your return on investment?
Analyzing your marketing performance can turn your marketing efforts into an investment, rather than an expense. How much is one new customer worth to you? Is that profit worth your investment?
Amanda Moore
Are you measuring your response rates?
When I ask about response rates or conversion rates all too often my customers convey that they have no idea what types of responses they are getting to their marketing. This is counterproductive to their marketing efforts.
If you don’t know the response rates to a marketing piece, you don’t know whether or not it is effective. If you don’t know whether or not it is effective, then you don’t know if it is a worthy return on your investment. If you don’t know if it is a good return on your investment, then you are just blindly pumping money into your marketing.—does any of this make sense?
Response mechanisms can come in many forms that can apply to different marketing pieces and different budgets. Personalized URLs, generic URLs, landing pages, and online surveys can all be used to capture who is responding to your call-to-action (register to win an iPod touch before September 1st at www.XyZ.com).
These online response mechanisms are very effective, very impressive, and generate more response rates but they are not fitting for every project or budget. Some response mechanisms can include a toll free number, calling a specific salesperson, or sending an email to a specific address, all of which can be measured.
Another alternative is to use your marketing piece as your response mechanism. Perhaps your campaign includes a coupon/voucher with a serial number that must be redeemed for the incentive. At the end of the promotion you can calculate how many vouchers were redeemed and determine who responded by the serial number.
Sometimes a response mechanism will generate no response. Although unfortunate, this is still very useful feedback. It may be time to rethink the before mentioned elements of your marketing piece and uncover why it isn’t effective. Remember, no feedback is good feedback!
Analyzing your marketing performance is key to successful marketing efforts. This is the most important step of the entire marketing process. It will help drive better results and your marketing performance depends on it!
Frustrated by your marketing?
I can’t generate new leads! My customers have left me for my competitor! They are not buying enough! I can’t seem to gain market share! They are not responding to my mailers! That postcard is too expensive! –My marketing isn’t working!
Everywhere I turn these days it seems that everyone is questioning their marketing. Although there is no sure fire formula that will bring success, there are ways to improve your marketing, enhance your response rates, and see a better return on your investment.
The next few blogs are intended to analyze your marketing efforts and will be presented in six short segments where we will discuss:
• Message and Copy
• Frequency and Timing
• Creative and Branding
• Call-to-Action and Incentive
• Target Audience and Data
• Response Mechanisms
Amanda Moore
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
