That old cliché but how many business owners really measure the return on investment (ROI) of their marketing spend?
The proliferation of routes to market and the technology available to you, the supplier and your buyer to compare, research and obtain feedback has resulted in some marketing managers and business owners giving up completely because it all just seems too much of a black art. At the other end of the spectrum there are those who invest in such a wide variety of complex analytics that the data becomes unwieldy and full of conflicting information.
It is important to think about how you risk manage your marketing budget and prioritise your spend:
Set realistic KPIs – are you clear about your strategic objectives? What outcomes are you looking for?
Don’t have too many KPIs, choose two or three that are achievable – you can always revise at a later date.
Now you can further develop your marketing plan and allocate budget against the desired outcomes.
Think about your customer and target audience, don’t for example, suddenly switch to Social media or allocate the largest proportion of your budget to it if your customer responds well to traditional printed direct mail DO ensure that you are costing the campaigns accurately, recording the responses, measuring the time taken from enquiry to appointment to order and the frequency of follow up by you and your team. Who will be responsible for this – an agency? Your marketing team? Admin?
Equally, if you have been pouring money into Direct Mail campaigns and exhibitions but perceive little return then investigate why, speak to your team and analyse the follow up, speak to your customers and then consider how you should access the target audience, how you will record that information and what do you need to change.
Make sure the marketing team and any agencies that you employ record and provide data in an easy to use format for both the Management team and Board members. Make sure that everyone receives the data and USES it to make informed decisions about the business.
It is better to have a few reports that are easy to understand, are accurate, read and understood by the management team than to be knee deep in printouts that are never going to be read or used in the decision making process.
Monitor, Review, follow up and revise if necessary. Use your data, be realistic and focussed on a few KPIs. Make sure that you put measures in place at the beginning of your planning period.
www.reformcreative.co.uk | 0161 236 0054 | [email protected]
An award-winning designer who has had work published in the most coveted D&AD annual. Educated to degree level with a BA (hons) in Design. Paul has 20 years in the design industry. Paul brings with…
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