By simply creating a log of enquiries and regularly reviewing it you’ll know how to effectively allocate your marketing budget.
As a marketing consultancy, we often come across businesses that are not measuring their marketing.
When asked why they are not measuring key metrics and where their customers are coming from, the answer is usually “We don’t have the time” or “We don’t need to do that, we’ve got plenty of business coming in”. This is a huge mistake and one that should be corrected immediately if you want to save money and grow your business.
Measuring your results, and keeping abreast of KPI’s associated with your business should be at the forefront of your mind. Below are a few reasons why you should start measuring if you want to grow your business.
You’ll Know What To Optimise
You may have heard the story behind the familiar McDonalds phrase “Would you like fries with that?” If not let us take you on a little marketing journey…
During some time in the 1970s, McDonalds marketers realised they could increase revenues by upselling fries to their current customers by asking if they “would like fries with that”! A simple sentence, which now allows them to serve about nine million pounds of fries globally…per day.
If they were not measuring their results, they would not have known what the result of this change would be. Luckily they were and realised the huge potential of this simple technique, so much so that to date they still train every employee to ask this simple sentence each time a customer orders. And no doubt this simple technique has lead to increased profits across the board.
The point of telling you this story is that, if you measure metrics and are aware of your numbers, you can easily identify places you can optimise and make changes, you can then test these changes, analyse the results of the changes and increase revenues without having to drastically increase the number of customers you have. Essentially you can increase the lifetime value of your current customers, without much extra effort, which of course can save you money too.
Build It Into Your Process
The example above provides a great example of a small change that can make a big difference. Simply asking your customers, or potential customers, where they heard about your business can have a positive impact on the efficiency of your marketing. Build this into your process so that you are asking customers where they heard about you. Train staff to ask this when the phone rings or include this question in a form. Once it becomes a process you’re more likely to stick to asking your customers.
Helps You Spot Weak Areas/Products Or Services
If you have a range of products and services or multiple sales channels you need to be aware of which ones are working for you.
Certain marketing or sales tasks may be costing you a lot of money but not actually producing a Return On Investment (ROI). If you do not know which is which, how can you spot inefficiencies and improve on them?
If you don’t measure where your enquiries are coming from, you’re not going to know what’s working for your business and what isn’t. By simply creating a log and regularly reviewing it you’ll know how to effectively allocate your marketing budget.
