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Don’t Do It If You Can’t Measure It

With today’s electronic marketing tools, the old adage that “half of marketing is wasted” is an outdated notion. There is no reason that every tactic in your marketing plan can’t be tracked, measured and evaluated for ROI (return on investment). In fact, I’d go as far as saying, “Don’t do it if you can’t measure it.” Few companies can afford to invest in extravagant brand awareness campaigns. In fact, all of the business leaders I know or serve are 100 percent focused on lead and revenue generation. In this economy, they don’t have the patience or luxury of making long-term investments in educating the market or slowly raising awareness. They are trying to quickly capitalize on tangible market opportunities today including displacing or replacing competitors that are withering or exiting the marketplace.

In a down economy, a well-developed, well-executed marketing plan can make a significant impact on a company’s bottom line. Now is the time to invest in marketing because the competitive landscape is thinning and buyers have fewer options. Your marketing resources can sustain you longer and generate a higher return than in the past. You, in essence, have more marketing purchasing power due to economic conditions.

Conversely, a misguided marketing program can have detrimental and potentially catastrophic results. According to the U.S. Small Business Administration more than half of businesses fail in the first five years. Of these, many directly attribute their failure to unrealized marketing strategies. In 2009 alone 627,200 new businesses formed, 595,600 business closed and 43,546 went bankrupt. Ratios do not differ greatly across industry sectors. These statistics make the case for closely tracking, measuring and evaluating your marketing investment on a regular basis to be sure it is a contributing factor to your company’s success, not a detractor.

There are many ways to transform traditional marketing strategies into measurable, focused, lead-generating investments. There also are many new marketing tools that allow you to capture the data you need to evaluate the investment and impact:

  • Websites: With current web analytics software tools, you should seriously consider investing in your website as a primary sales and marketing hub. By transforming your brochure-ware website into an effective lead generating and lead converting asset, you can exponentially expand your sales and marketing resources. If you choose to upgrade your website, be sure to consider these elements: optimize the site for search engines (SEO), include compelling offers and calls-to-action throughout the new site, develop interactive ways to connect with prospects, create a positive user experience by following best practices in website strategy and design, etc. With free web analytics tools like Google Analytics, you’ll be able to cost justify the investment in the new site by methodically tracking the number, source and quality of leads generated by and processed on the site.
  • e-Mail Marketing: Electronic marketing is a fast, cost-efficient and effective way to drive qualified leads and stay connected to your customers and prospects. Because most professional e-mail marketing software includes robust analytics tools, you can collect valuable data and quantify the return on your marketing investment. You’ll be able to track how e-mail is impacting your organization’s ability to up sell and cross sell services to existing clients, renew dormant accounts and pique interest among prospects.
  • Advertising: If you’ve been hesitant to utilize advertising in your marketing mix because you can’t track the results, try incorporating unique phone numbers, promotional codes and landing pages on your website. In addition, make your ads actionable with clear calls-to-action like “call now,” “download a white paper,” “visit our booth,” etc. These two efforts combined, will allow you to capture tangible lead generation data to evaluate the effectiveness of your advertising investment. Now is also a great time to try online search engine marketing (SEM) like pay-per-click advertising programs. Google and Yahoo! can help you reach millions of online buyers at the moment they are searching for products or services like yours — and both search engines offer robust tracking and analytics packages so you can measure ROI.
  • Direct mail: If you think direct mail is the way to go, make sure you put systems in place to track its effectiveness. Due to all of the factors and costs involved (list rental, printing, postage, timing, etc.) it is critical that you have the right tools to measure the success of campaigns. Just like traditional ads, you’ll need to incorporate ways to make your direct mail actionable and trackable. This includes unique phone numbers, promotional codes, specific landing pages on your website and clear calls-to-action.

In addition to being measurable, all of your marketing tactics should include a clear way to engage with prospects and corral them into the sales cycle. You can do this in a number of ways. For instance, give prospects an incentive to respond and share their contact information. This might include an invitation to an event or webinar or an offer to download a free case study or white paper. Once you receive a prospect’s contact information, be sure to methodically enter it into a database – and include as much information as possible so you can start creating a profile for each potential client. This database will become a valuable asset at you execute plans to continually communicate with these qualified prospects. Keep nurturing and tracking these leads as you move them further through the sales funnel.
The bottom line is the bottom line. When it comes to marketing, don’t do it if you can’t track it. While your marketing dollars will definitely take you farther in this economy, you probably have fewer dollars available. This means you need to make every penny count. Now that we’re half way through the year and your marketing plan has had an opportunity to make an impact, take a hard look at what your marketing program has accomplished. See if you can align marketing costs with leads, revenue and profitability. If not, it’s never too late to course correct. If a marketing strategy isn’t producing measurable, tangible results by this point in the year, stop it. Don’t continue to throw good money after bad.

About the Author:
Amy Zucker, a public relations and marketing veteran with 15 years of industry expertise, is president and founder of Synergy Marketing Group. The firm is a Woman-owned Business Enterprise (WBE) with offices in Indianapolis and Dallas. In addition to public relations, the agency also specializes in brand development, strategic marketing, advertising, Web site development, social media and event planning. In her role as president, Amy sets the agency’s quality standards, defines Synergy’s client service model and develops the firm’s operational processes. She also actively participates in all clients’ strategic planning processes and provides them with ongoing counsel and crisis management. Throughout her career she has helped her clients increase brand awareness, establish credibility, generate demand, launch new companies, and measure return on investment. Her areas of expertise include: strategic planning; crisis management; corporate communications; brand creation; crafting and effectively delivering strategic key messages; and garnering prominent press coverage in local, regional, national and trade media outlets. Amy can be reached at 317.205.9690 ext. 223 or amy@synergy-mg.com. To learn more about Synergy Marketing Group, please visit www.synergy-mg.com.