Most companies have a formal budget that is reserved for marketing. They have an upper level to which they can go. They spend it each month and are most likely unsure that the budget is getting a return. If the marketing budget is spent on your website, an SEO team, brochures or articles, it’s hard to measure a real return in some cases, so you’re never quite sure if your marketing firm is working for you.
Any time that we spend money with a marketing firm, we have to look at that expenditure and ask ourselves how well it working and whether the expense is netting a return. Very few companies actually lay out a plan that allows them to measure whether it is working and how well it is working to determine if the current marketing agency is doing the job or if they need to consider another alternative.
In order to track the worth of your marketing, there has to be a yardstick by which you measure it. What is that yardstick and how do you as a business implement it?
To a large extent, the way in which you measure the return will depend on the way in which you are marketing and what you are marketing.
Logically, different types of measurement will apply to your marketing campaigns, those being:
Initiation of Contact. Customer contacts from the marketed area are one logical measurement to determine if the marketing is bearing fruit. If you are using, for example, a phone book advertisement and none of your calls come from that campaign, it’s reasonable to assume that it is not a workable method.
Visibility-if you’re using a website marketing team and your website is nowhere to be found in search, does not show up on any keyword term, or has no visibility overall in social media, the odds are very good that your particular marketing campaign is not viable.
Creating some bottom lines and benchmarks by which to measure is in the best interests of every company as a means to measure success from a marketing campaign.
When you seek to determine if your marketing firm is working for you, some things that you may want to take into account are these:
Get a starting point for each area of marketing. Determine where you were in search prior to hiring the company and where you are each month. Is there a rise in your visibility?
How frequently did you receive calls prior to hiring the marketing firm that could be linked to your website or your phone ad or other methods that you are using now? Have the number of calls risen dramatically or risen at all?
Once you’ve made the determination that the marketing firm is working for you,(or is not) consider how well it is working and why.
Evaluate what you are spending and how far it will go. Bear in mind that you cannot ask a company to do twice what you want to pay for. Consider the budget, be realistic about what it will do for you and consider expanding on it if you find that the company is giving you a return for what you’ve already spent.