By Adriel Michaud, Special to Overdrive
Bury your competition by knowing what marketing works
Within the arena of online marketing, I’ve had the opportunity to meet and chat with hundreds of marketing professionals from fortune 500 companies to starting out sole proprietors. It’s always surprised me how many lack a basic understanding of the effectiveness of their marketing spend. These include campaigns costing hundreds of thousands of dollars that aren’t tracked for impact on sales, awareness change or customer satisfaction improvements. It seems like a lot of businesses treat marketing dollars like an extra overhead cost that they spend “when they can afford it”, but are unaware of how it actually works for them. If you’re in one of these companies, you can stop this madness!
What’s the point of it all?
Good marketing influences more than just sales. It can change perceptions about the company, improve customer satisfaction and even reduce costs in other departments. It’s impossible to measure it all, but if you can find a few solid metrics that do a decent job of representing key aspects of your sales cycle, you’re one step closer to the truth. Sales are the easiest to measure, but sales can be influenced by many different factors. Awareness can be difficult to measure since it’s far away from the sales close and typically involves surveying the public. Leads, for businesses that operate on inquiries, can be a great middle ground because it can be easier to determine where they came from, and if they close successfully. (more…)