So many of us have Marketing Plans but are we effectively measuring the results and using that data to further grow our business and opportunities?
This picture illustrates what a solid marketing plan should involve:
Knowing which specific areas of your marketing strategies are working will without a doubt save you money and time as you will be spending your money and time on the areas that are working and more focused on providing to the customers that are connecting with you in those areas.
If you can't answer the following questions than you have no way of knowing what in your marketing plan is working/not working and you have some work to do to make 2010 a great year.
I invite you to ask yourself:
- How did most of my clients find me last year?
- Which of my websites or blogs did they visit/connect with me on?
- Which of my social media sites did they connect with me on?
- What tool (blog craigslist, trulia, zillow, etc) yielded the greatest connections for me?
Now two more important questions before we continue:
- Can I and will I sustain those marketing efforts this year?
- Is there anything I can change about my marketing strategies that didn't yield the greatest results?
Notice I didn't say "didn't work." All too often it could be a matter of not giving a particular marketing strategy enough time or the best attention/focus or direction. Give each of your marketing tasks some time before you completely abandon them. It could be a simple little change to an aspect of it that makes all the difference.
Another point I'd like to mention is that while I think it's important to know what your competitors and colleagues are offering and doing, I think it's also important to:
- Feel good about what you are offering (and deliver on it!) Be creative and try some new things.
- Listen to your current clients and prospects in your market.
My point is don't look for a quick fix or simply use someone else's idea because it's working in their market. Be focused on putting the time and effort into your plan and carrying it out to provide the results your clients want and need. In the end you will have far better results in something that you created and you believe in.
Now that you've determined the areas that are yielding the greatest results/connections, what needs changing and what needs to be dropped entirely, you can now measure your marketing efforts by gathering information that will keep you on the path towards growing your business and investing in the right areas to make this happen:
Ask the right questions
Track how prospects heard of you. (be sure to have all staff asking this very important question.) Simply asking a prospect of how they heard of you or found you is one of the easiest and most overlooked ways to track this data. Now for the really important part - document itin your CRM. This will become especially helpful if you use your database to send out newsletters and email campaigns that are targeted towards specific groups. See a previous post for more ideas on how to setup your database to provide targeted campaigns.
Don't just have a campaign - manage it!
With everything we are involved in throughout a day it's hard to keep track of all we're doing. Have a database that lists your campaigns along with a description. Track how many leads and sales came from those efforts. Here's an example of tracking you can use on advertising campaigns.
Measure the Metrics for your websites and blogs
- How are your website/blog visitors finding your site? What pages brought them to you?
- How much time are they spending on your site?
- How many pages are they visiting per visit?
- How many return visitors have you seen and what brought them there?
These three areas above are a great place to start when it comes to analyzing your marketing efforts and giving you areas to fine tune and focus your efforts.
Whatever tools you're using to gather data the point I'm making is MEASURE IT and USE IT to benefit what you will offer and how you will offer it to your clients.
I challenge you to:
- Review your data and results from last year
- Assess and Make Adjustments your marketing plan (esp if you simply took what you did last year without really analyzing it fully - aren't you doing some new things already that you weren't last year?)
- Challenge yourself to be different
- Deliver on your plan and promises by reviewing your plans and goals, measuring and changing as necessary.
What steps have you taken to measure your marketing plans effectiveness?
What are you doing differently in 2010 vs. what you did in 2009?
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Other Helpful blog posts on this topic:
Ensure your site comes up when customers search
Marketing is like exercising - tone and see results
Simple Marketing Strategies to Use Every Day
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