Simple Business Steps - Marketing: Measuring Results

Welcome to my “Simple Business Steps”? postings. The following are my thoughts based on expertise and previous experiences from my past 20+ years working within and leading organizations both big and small.

Running your business is a lot of work - fun at times and not so fun other times. Beyond the service or product that drives the revenues, there are a lot of aspects to running your business.

A few key aspects that need to be done right in operating your business include:

• Staffing – Hiring, training, managing, and yes, terminating
• Administration – process design, structure, documenting, tracking, storing
• Finance – financing, pricing, cash-flow – A/R & A/P
• Marketing – mediums, message, timing
• Sales – team skills, market channel, account management

… Plus all the details these entail.

The following is: Part Four – Marketing: Measuring Results

This is short introduction to only a piece of the Marketing requirements you and your business may need to address in your daily operations.

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Marketing

This is one of my favourite areas to work in. There’s a lot of freedom and flexibility in what you do and how you do your marketing… so long as you’re accomplishing your goals.

But… ‘What are your marketing goals?’

Having the money to spend and a number of ideas to do something that uses your company’s name and lets people know about your products and services is valuable however – what are you measuring to define that value?

Measuring the spend portion of your marketing efforts is very easy – dollars paid out, all summed together for every method and venue, tells exactly the amount spent. Done.

What about the return for those dollars spent? Just what are your dollars getting your firm for that investment? Whatever you/ your firm does spend isn’t going to give you the ability to replicate the success (if you had some) long-term unless you’re measuring the results. As the saying goes ‘even broken clocks are at right twice a day’. In all business dealings you want to understand if you’re doing it right – are your marketing dollars providing you with some tangible benefit? Or even some intangible benefits should eventually help your business's success.

What are your results?

If you’re not measuring the results, how do you know the dollars spent are providing any benefit? It could be a few lucky hits that show up (e.g. broken clock) and mislead you to believe your marketing is successful – but more likely there is an opportunity to achieve greater numbers with better understanding of why there was some success to start.

What can you do? What is there to do?

Well, yes, start measuring, but just what are you measuring?

At the outset of any marketing venture, regardless of medium – if you’re spending money, you should have a definition of success outlined. This may be modified as you review your initial results but you need to set a target at the outset – a starting point to measure against.

Marketing Avenues

There are a number of avenues comprised within marketing, each with their own purpose and set of metrics to measure against. The four main areas are Advertising, Marketing Materials, Promotions/ Sponsorships and Sales Team (yes, Sales Team – I view the function of investing in the team as an alternative to other marketing spending).

In order to ensure this posting sticks with its principles of being Simple and does not become a sleep aide, I will limit my detail review to only the measuring of Advertising.

Promotions/ Sponsorship – These are where your business promotes its name by sponsoring a lunch or breakfast at a tradeshow or a golf hole during a tournament, all with the purpose of expanding people’s knowledge of your name. This could be for general public consumption or done at an industry specific event where all attendees are prospects.

Sales Team – these are skilled people you’ve hired and trained to close on sales with prospective clients. The funds could be used elsewhere but a balanced marketing plan works to attract people while also ensuring there are means to close on a sale – people don’t typically complete a purchase without having had some level of interaction somewhere along the process of learning about your product or service. Even online services offer that ongoing pestering pop-up of “Hi, I’m Sarah. Can I help you?”, where you can have a real-time conversation online.

Marketing Materials – When selling to folks, you need to provide tools that help explain your service or product in simple terms. The documents cover the main points of benefits offered along with some background and history. They can be a mixture of lengths depending on your potential audience and the document’s use (e.g. presentation vs handout). These don’t typically stand-alone but are meant to work in conjunction with other marketing efforts as you can place the documents online for download or make available for pick-up at your tradeshow booth or as handouts for your sales team to share.

Advertising – this is the typical marketing area most folks will think of when considering marketing. Today, this avenue comprises Digital and Analog focus.

Digital Advertising – this newish medium has rapidly expanded over the past 10 years. You now have Social Media, Web Advertisements, Email Campaigns, YouTube videos, Pay-per-Click Ads (PPC), SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and more, all of which utilize digital forms to communicate to prospects with information and the means to contact you/ your firm whether it be electronically, by phone or even in person attendance at an event, your store or office.

Analog Advertising – the old school method of getting a message out still exists – newspapers, TV ads, billboards, sky writing and all those forms that you’ve seen over your life. These methods have shrunk especially in the case of newspapers where readership is dramatically down and in fact moved over to the digital sphere.

Measuring Advertising – For both Digital and Analog methods, you developed content that is meant to catch the eye of a viewer and included with that message is a call-to-action; a request or question that inspires the viewer to take an additional step to learn more about your products or services. Whatever it is that you’ve asked the viewer to do, that is what you’re going to measure – simple, right? Phone calls, emails or other inbound communications from prospects are measurable; even website visits or downloads of the files you’ve linked to the emails or web ads are countable. In all, you’re looking for those points of contact to build beyond passive viewing of your website or documents towards the active step of phoning in, visiting your store or completing an online inquiry form – you want to be able to have a sales person engage with the prospect.

The concept is at times described as a funnel – you start with many (more is better) contacts coming in through from your advertisements. As they progress, some may naturally self-select to exit the process however as those remaining move through, delving further into learning about your business or service, you will want to be able to reach out with a person – someone from your sales team. The funnel will get you only so far but you need that person (virtual or otherwise) who brings the client over the line.

So, the measuring of your Advertising is completed at each stage as prospects move along toward making an inquiry – that initial look at your website, then looking at your product online followed by making contact with your firm – completing a form or calling in. There are many more levels of detail that you can measure against but ultimately your advertising is trying to grow the leads into your firm for your sales team to take on.

Review - Revise - Run - Repeat

Next, you're going to review what you wanted to accomplish with your Advertising - how many website visits, document downloads, phone calls or form submissions. As you review the results versus what you'd set out as expectations, you can see whether you were successful. Regardless of meeting the numbers or not, you'll need to consider whether the advertisement could be improved upon – that may include revising the ad itself, placing the ad in different locations or changing the timing of when or where it shows. This process will then be repeated as you look over the results after some amount of time of running the ad again. Overall, advertising is a repetitive process that is constantly being reviewed and revised to generate the desired results.

Marketing - Comprehensive Process

Marketing is a comprehensive process that engages all stages of prospect interest starting with the telling folks you exist with sponsorships or advertising and then giving further details with marketing materials and ultimately having them work with your sales team to complete the sale.

There’s a lot to work through when creating marketing plans; many aspects that should be tied together help ensure a seamless process for prospective clients to move through from initially learning about your products and services through to purchasing. These many pieces need to be overseen as you lead your business. You may have all the skills but not the time, or you may have some of the time but not all knowledge to make you comfortable in completing all the functions.

What help is there?

Help is available - you can contact me, Aaron Taylor. I work with small to medium sized businesses providing the pieces to help at all stages of your operation such as the setup and getting your firm going with the necessary operating aspects or later on as your business is looking at the next stages.

I’m available for interim periods of time to help you develop the needed expertise internally. I can setup, structure, and give guidance to get you through to the next stage – help you grow or just step in briefly to cover a gap.

I bring a wide range of industry experience and expertise from all levels of management. Drop me a note to discuss – I’m always open to meet and chat about how best to address the opportunities running a business presents.

So, if you’re looking for help understanding or doing, I’m available, just direct message me and we can chat about your current plans and goals.

All the best in running your business - it's tough but you've got help out there.

? Aaron. W. Taylor 2018