Resolve to evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing

Your list of New Year’s resolutions should include taking a look back at the performance of your marketing in 2017. This can be an affirming experience, or a rude awakening depending on what you find. In either case you should determine what is working well and what could be improved upon with an “out with the old and in with the new” attitude.

Let me first say that if you started last year without a marketing plan or strategy, don't let that one get away from you this year. How will you know when you have arrived at either a positive or negative outcome from your marketing efforts if you have no plan or goals identified that you hope to reach as a result of your marketing work.

Your plan should include both qualitative and quantitative goals. Qualitative goals address promotional advantages while quantitative goals deal with the numbers you measure. Your qualitative goals should be about customers' perception of your product and/or service. For example increasing the perceived value by offering a discount or lowering the price of your offering. 

Positioning is also qualitative, where does your product and/or service rank when it is compared to your competitors. You increase the position of your product by educating on the quality of the product and/or service that you offer. You can also increase the positioning by going after a specific niche or targeted market and presenting that specialty as an expertise. 

Awareness is also important when it comes to qualitative data. You must create an awareness of what you offer. This is important in order to get the consumer to purchase from you.

Quantitative goals are about the numbers, measuring things like how many units were sold, how many hours of service were provided, how many leads were captured or how many attendees there were at events.

Breaking down marketing efforts into “campaigns” can also be helpful. Measure the effectiveness of your marketing by campaign using:

•  Campaign Budget What will you spend in order to achieve the qualitative and quantitative goals you have set? What is your desired outcome when it comes to that budget? What will deem the spend as a success?
•  Fulfillment and response strategy how will you fulfill orders and or services and how will you respond to those that reach out based on your marketing strategy?
•  Follow-up Strategy What is your follow-up strategy? What will you use to stay in touch with those consumers who do not purchase immediately? If they don't buy how will you follow up with them in order to close the sale?

Depending on your objective most goals can be measured effectively using one of three methods. These methods include: 

• Cost per sale 
• Cost per qualified lead 
• Cost per visitor 

Once you decide which result you want to measure and you have the costs incurred for each campaign; calculating is actually fairly easy. 

• Cost per Sale = Amount Spent for Campaign (A) / Number of sales (S) = Cost per sale (CPS)
   Formula:  A / S = CPS
• Cost per Qualified Lead = Amount Spent for Campaign ( A) / Number of Qualified Leads (L) = Cost per qualified Lead (CPQL)
  Formula: A / L = (CPQL)
• Cost per Visitor or Response = Amount Spent for Campaign (A) / Number of visitors or response (R)  = Cost per Visitor or Response (CPR)
  Formula: A / R = CPR

Using these formulas along with pre-determined qualitative goals for each campaign will give you the information you need to decide if a campaign was effective for your business. If it was... Congratulations!

If not, it's time to visit the efforts of the campaign and find out exactly why it didn't work and how you can improve it the next time. Or you may choose to eliminate it all together.

There are several reasons why a marketing campaign may fail and not bring you your desired the results, but future successes will come from determining what those reasons are and dealing with them.

If you’re a small business owner, we should get to know each other. My methods for creating decades of successful marketing campaigns could be critical in your efforts to attract new customers and to drive new business. My new book; How to Build Marketing Campaigns That Get Results and Drive Growth is about to be published. It will be available to download from the McCafferty Advertising website soon.