How do you set goals for your marketing plan?
First, you determine what you want to accomplish. If you need to hit revenue goals, how are you going to do it? If you’ve got A, B and C clients, how many of each do you need to hit your goals? Where are the clients in each category, and what message do you need to target to each group? Once you determine goals such as these, you’ll know where to focus your efforts and can effectively allocate your dollars.
Let’s say you’ve found a number of new clients. Look closely at the numbers to see if you’re closing them, what messages they’re responding to and what else is working or needs to be tweaked. You can’t just run a campaign, hope to find new clients and walk away. You have to ask yourself, ‘Are they the right clients?’ and ‘What got them here?’
Another consideration in goal setting is account attrition. How many of your customers leave each year? Maybe they don’t leave, but they go into maintenance mode and therefore aren’t generating as much revenue. You have to take that into account on top of your growth goals.
How can marketing help you be unique to your customers?
To rise above the competition and clutter, you have to stand out by differentiating yourself. Look at the metrics, see what people are responding to and hone it over time. It’s really easy to say, ‘Here’s my marketing campaign; I’m going to do this for the quarter.’ But it shouldn’t be one and done. Figure out which efforts help you stand out. With the available technology, it’s easy to adjust or tweak your message midcampaign, especially when you are measuring your efforts. If you’re tracking it regularly, you can pull back and see what’s working, what isn’t, what messages are getting traction and which aren’t.
How do you test whether your message is working?
Many companies are wandering in the desert and the sands are constantly shifting. Testing really comes down to the effective use of both intuition and data. Companies can vary messaging, test print or digital, capture information about behavior from their Web sites, but the true measure of how well your messages are working is whether or not you are attracting the right customers and reaching your goals. This approach makes marketing a profit center rather than an expense.
Take tradeshows for instance. Though costly, many companies do them without really knowing the return. There are always business cards to collect and people to meet, but what are the results? How many of those ‘leads’ really become a customer and how long does it take? If a company goes in knowing its customer profile, understands who it needs to connect with and has a goal to test something, like whether presenting in a breakout or just working the booth attracts the best leads, it is on its way to finding out what messages are successful and what efforts deliver profitable results.
Bo Bothe is the president and chief creative officer of BrandExtract, an integrated branding and communications firm that guides growing companies by providing strategic branding solutions, marketing communications, advertising, print and interactive services. Reach him at [email protected] or (713) 942-7959, or visit www.brandextract.com.