Marketing and ROI

Marketing Analysis
In today's economy many companies are looking at their marketing and deciding what to cut. In making that decision they should look hard at the purpose and ROI of each marketing program. What was the purpose of the marketing campaign and subsequent spend? Did it achieve the purpose? Did it produce the expected or at least acceptable ROI?

Each program and marketing tack should be reviewed individually then again by segmentation based on such items as new product launch, cross channel marketing, customer retention, customer growth and prospecting. Understanding marketing spend and ROI takes time however it is necessary for companies to truly determine if their monies are being used wisely.

After performing the analysis, companies can make a more informed decision as to cuts or money shifting to more effective programs. Cutting in-effective marketing may reduce your cost but then have negative impact on your sales revenue.

Re-Allocation of funds
After a company has determine what spend could be re-allocated a company should further consider what marketing is needed. Will it be product oriented or to promote branding? What marketing channel best suits the targeted objective? How will this be tracked and reported?
When? By whom?

Marketing is perpetual
A marketing plan should follow the PDSA formula: Plan, Do, Study, Act. This is an ongoing, self-educating mechanism. Each program should gather information which can be applied to the next version of the same program. Changes are made based on the learned data and the program becomes more effective and intelligent.

Email ?'s to me at Roger.Buck@EmergingSolutionsNow.com

It's old, it's new and it will always be vital...it's called marketing!

I saw an old business forms printers joke recently where a caveman is holding a club and chisel in front of four stone tablets. His supervisor is saying, "Hit hard, your making four copies.".

My thoughts? Who sold him the four stones and how would you market them? Was the salesman's business card a river stone? Who did he show the value of his stone tablets compared to the competitors?

Marketing is a vital key to any successful business whether you sell stone or RDIF tags. Understanding the role of marketing in the sales cycle is equally important. Many companies view these as the same function however marketing does not create sales as much as it creates an environment for a sale to occur. What's a good environment and where does that environment exist? How do you get a customer or prospect to visit that environment? When do you want them to visit? Good marketing can answer these questions and begin the ongoing process of bringing customers and prospects to the sales funnel.