VisionBridge

Marketing is exciting.  It is the part of our business that allows us to let our creative juices to flow and brings us hope about all of the new sales we will receive from our efforts.  But as energizing and exciting as marketing is, just like anything else, marketing is most successful when it follows a systematized process.

Many of us try the newest latest and greatest in hopes that a new marketing tactic will be the answer, but marketing usually isn’t about one tactic or idea that becomes a smash hit.  On average, a customer must hear, see, or experience your product seven times before they make a purchase.  In order to get the most out of your marketing efforts, it must consist of regular, consistent communication over time.  In other words, you must create a system that delivers to your target market on a regular basis.

Here are some ideas to get started:

1. Team. Gather your team in a room and reevaluate your target market and where they spend their time.  Who is buying your product or service?  What websites do they visit?  What periodicals do they read?  What blogs do they follow?  Include recent surveys from customers that ask how they learned about your company.
2. Whiteboard. Write out each of the ways you can think of that prospects and customers have heard about you.  Are there other ways they could learn more about your company that you haven’t explored?  Brainstorm new ideas based on the information you learned about your target market.
3. Strategy. Pick the ideas that will give you the most bang for your buck.  Note that you may not know what those are yet!  You will want to be sure that you complete the activities for a specified amount of time (more than once!) and track their success.  Start by using a marketing calendar.  Take your variety of ideas and put them into regular intervals on the calendar.  Here’s a link to a free one you can download for 2009:  http://www.brandeo.com/node/1135.
4. Document. Don’t reinvent the wheel each time you complete a marketing tactic.  Write down the steps it takes to complete it and, if you can, delegate it to someone else to continue the activity regularly.  This allows you to focus on other high value efforts.
5. Track! This is the most important part of the process.  You cannot know the success of your efforts unless you track them.  E-mail marketing makes this easy as you can watch open and click-through rates.  Set up a system where your salespeople consistently ask each new prospect how they heard about your company.  Track the information on a spreadsheet (or other method such as your CRM) and evaluate the marketing efforts with the highest success.  Then add and delete tactics based on this evaluation.

By looking at marketing as a process, you will stop wasting money on hit or miss activities and start spending your valuable time and money where it matters most.  Good luck!