Making marketing work harder
There isn’t a marketing team in the land that is having money thrown at them right now, no questions asked. Budgets are tight and return on investment is paramount, so getting the most out of your team, whether you are marketing trained or not, is a real skill. If you are working with, or considering getting a marketing expert in to push your business on, here are 5 tips to get the best out of your investment:
1. Give the agency a problem
No one ever comes to a marketing department when things are going well, but a sure fire way of not getting the best out of your budget is telling that department what you want. Sounds crazy? Inevitably clients, whether you are in house marketeer or otherwise, come with a solution, such as “I need a website” or “We need to send another direct mail out”. If you bring the answer rather than a problem to solve, it immediately creates an obstacle that the marketeer needs to overcome before the project can progress.
2. Sharpen your customer journey touchpoints
Perhaps your customer will go through a 10 point process within a campaign, starting with an advert and ending in a purchase, via a direct mailer, blog or website or whatever is proposed in the promotional mix. At each point make sure you have a benchmark. If, at regular intervals you can increase the performance of these touchpoints by just 1%, then this could result in 10% growth. This simple spring clean could save or make your company money.
3. Ask the agency to set a budget
Marketeers are creative, so make them work. Also, work out what is important within the campaign. If the agency can achieve 90% of the goals within the budget, you need to decide if that 10% is worth the extra spend.
4. Measure impact, not results
Set the (Key Performance Indicators) KPIs together for the campaign, making sure you measure the impact, not just the result. Not just a 25% increase in traffic to the website, a 25% increase in traffic resulting in £x in revenue.
5. Use failures
Marketing is not an exact science, more a research and test framework. Don’t shut down a project before you fully understand why you failed. Make sure you go outside of unachieved KPIs before you consider a campaign dead in the water. Always plan reviews at regular intervals throughout, so you can take evasive action before all the budget is spent.