Something to Think About…

Five Tips for Making Marketing Magic by Jeff Barnhart

The implementation of your 2011 marketing plan is moving ahead. Clear strategies and a budget to support them are in place. A logical set of market-informed tactical actions are rolling out according to a planned timeline. However, there are other factors around your marketing plan objectives and the implementation of tactics that can have a potential impact on the success of your efforts.

Consider these five tips for getting more profitable marketing results:

1. Build a cohesive brand… A company’s brand design and messaging should resonate consistently across all marketing initiatives and materials. In theory, this seems obvious yet, in practice, a review of some companies’ print and digital marketing communications reveals a brand schizophrenia resulting from design and messaging which changes from one marketing medium to the next. While marketing components don’t need to be identical, a successful brand results from consistency of design themes and messages carried across all tactics. Consistency reinforces customer expectations that a brand will deliver the same qualities and benefits at each touch point with the company.

2. Greater alignment of marketing and sales… Involve sales staff in the front-end development of planned tactical items. Sales people have a unique and invaluable front line perspective on the competitive landscape a company’s tactical efforts will march across. Getting sales staff input increases the likelihood that marketing will provide them with the sales tools they need and encourages them to buy into and sell with the marketing messages the tactics are built upon. Keep sales up to speed on current marketing promotions and campaigns. Study after study has shown that companies whose marketing and sales staffs work as an interdependent team generate greater revenue and profit.

3. Take the pulse… Customers and prospects are the lifeblood of a business and surveying them periodically is essential to the success of a marketing plan. In addition to gauging awareness and penetration of a company’s marketing messages, the knowledge and insights gained from periodic customer and prospect surveys ensures the ongoing relevance of your messages and tactics in response to any shifts in customer needs, wants or challenges.

4. We cannot manage what we do not measure… Assuming a marketing plan’s objectives are measurable (which should be a requisite in developing them), measuring tactical performance against a defined set of metrics determines whether the objectives of the marketing plan are being met or an adjustment is needed. With the exception of sales promotions designed to move the meter in the short term, marketing results take time. Metrics tend to reveal more information when measured regularly over a longer period. Tracking downloads, Website visitors, attendees at various events and campaign-specific web hits or phone calls are typical metrics. Others can include rate of customer acquisition and attrition, cost per lead, rate of new product or service leads and sales, growth in customer buying frequency and volume of business.

5. Maintain flexibility… Ongoing measurement is also important for adapting marketing tactics and messages to changes in external marketplace forces or the emergence of a particularly successful tactic. A specific tactic, message or target audience generating a higher response may warrant a shift to put more marketing budget dollars and tactical weight behind the opportunity. Measurement identifies successful approaches that can be expanded as well as less successful tactics that can be re-tooled or retired.

When it comes to marketing, a company doesn’t have to do everything at once, but it should always be doing something on an ongoing basis to build and sustain a differentiated marketplace presence. Having measurable marketing objectives, incorporating sales staff input, maintaining a consistent brand look and messaging as well as measuring the results of marketing efforts goes a long way to accelerating a company’s velocity on the road to success.

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