Measuring Your Marketing ROI

Measuring Your Marketing ROI

We all know how invaluable marketing is to the success of our businesses, yet a very small percentage of business owners bother to track their metrics to determine which types of marketing are acutally working for them. You may be familiar with the quote, often attributed to Peter Drucker, "What gets measured gets done."

More importantly, in my opinion, when it comes to marketing, what gets measured indicates what you should do more of - and what you should slow down on, or release entirely.

Say you love doing trade shows and expos ... but you generally net one client per event. Let's look at the time investment there. You've had to register for the event, prepare your materials, purchase necessary items, pack your car, drive to the event, unpack your car and set up the booth, spend from half a day to the better part of a week there, dismantle your booth and repack your car, drive home, and respond to any leads you received in a timely fashion. To net ONE client. And that's not even factoring in any monetary costs!

In such a situation, you have a few options:

(1) Get some training to find out what you might do better to increase your lead generation at these kinds of shows.

(2) Bring in a partner or assistant to help you.

(3) Share your booth with someone in an allied business.

(4) Rethink your strategy altogether.

Now I'm not suggesting that trade shows and expos are a bad method of marketing. I'm simply saying that you need to make sure the places you're investing the most time are repaying you on a scale that makes that investment worthwhile.

Below are the contents of a worksheet I use with my clients when we're sitting down to investigate the best ways for them to start getting traction with their marketing. While the first 3 columns are important for shining a light on where you presently focus your attention (and where you might think about getting more training or assistance), I encourage you to pay particular attention to the last column - because this is where you can see how well the time you're spending is really paying off.

If you get most of your business through networking, but you're spending 80 percent of your time blogging, it might be time to rethink your strategy.

I would NEVER suggest utilizing just one method of marketing; nor would I suggest trying to implement all of them at once. Start with what is simplest and works best, and build from there, adding one or two new strategies, as appropriate. Try them out - if they work, do more of them. If they don't work, put them aside for the time being.

Remember that the market changes - so what works today might not work tomorrow, and likewise, what didn't work last year might be perfect today.

EVALUATE YOURSELF

Rate yourself on each of the following, using a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being the highest). The results might surprise you.

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For answers to your questions about writing, editing, marketing, or design e-mail Laura or visit Write | Market | Design where we specialize in teaching our writers to think like marketers!

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