Is your digital marketing strategy really helping you hit your targets?
The answer to that question depends on how well you are tracking the performance of all of your marketing activity, and if you are happy with the overall results.
Lots of businesses do not have a great set of sales KPIs – those pesky targets and numbers which show you how well you are doing at driving business performance, and which give you an early warning system – either of the need to try harder, change direction, or add more resources to the operations side to deal with an increase in demand. And without these targets, it becomes harder to evaluate how well any of your marketing strands are performing – we tend to look at the problem globally.
“Are we hitting our target? Yes, cool. No? Panic!”
We can look at the comparative performance of each marketing strand – do we generate more business from customer referrals or Facebook adverts? Which gives us better quality leads? A better conversion rate?
But how often do you look at the costs involved in generating each of your sales? And do you have the data systems that allow you to easily do this?
B2B companies spend on average 5 – 10% of their turnover on sales and marketing activity, with B2C spending 10-20%. And these days a lot of businesses are spending about 20% of this overall budget on social media and digital marketing. Which leads to many others feeling like they are possibly missing a huge opportunity to generate sales. There are an awful lot of companies out there all promoting this line – mainly the companies who are wanting us to spend our budgets in their direction on video content, outsourcing our social media posts, advertising, the list goes on……
So what is the right way to do this?
Here are our thoughts:
Have you got a plan?
We recommend our clients start with a plan. Your Business Plan. What are you looking to achieve over the next two years in terms of business growth, new service offerings, new markets, pivoting, or just being happy with where you are?
How clear are you with technical marketing terms such as your Target Market, Ideal Client, and Value Proposition? Have you broken these down for each of your product and service offerings? When was the last time you reviewed them to make sure they are valid?
How well is your current marketing plan working?
Not just the digital element, but the whole thing. Think about where each lead is coming from, conversion rates, the cost per sale for each marketing strand and each service offering, what elements in your plan did you talk yourself out of? And if you don’t have the data to answer these questions, then you have a really good starting point – improve your tracking and recording so you can work it out.
How pro-active is your Sales Process?
There is no point delivering amazing marketing content if there is no conversion to sales performance. Many businesses are not particularly pro-active in terms of prospecting for potential clients. For many, it is about chucking out a lot of marketing content and seeing what sticks. If we are to talk about if your strategy is one of hunting or farming, then this would be more like muck spreading. Pro-activity is uncomfortable – lots of us shy away from it and look for other ways forward. It has connotations of cold calling, spamming, flyers through the door…… which for many are deeply unpleasant activities. In the end it is about starting conversations with the people you most want to work with and who you think will most benefit from your services. That does not have to be cheesy.
Where are your ideal clients loitering?
This is one of the key underpinnings for re-aligning your marketing plan to be more digital. Digital marketing can help you be much more targeted in your approach – if you get it right. If you are just posting on the social media platform you are most comfortable on, then you will be missing a lot of opportunities. Ask yourself:
• Is this platform where my ideal clients are? How do I know?
• How many of my ideal clients are we connected with? Do we have a strategy to pro-actively connect with people who match our ideal client profile?
• How engaging are your posts? Or are they just a bit corporate? People buy from people, and while the corporate posts are good for brand identity they don’t tend to build much buzz or engagement.
• How well are you amplifying your message?
• How good are your calls to action?
Should you spend your budget on cooler content or better staff training?
One has va va voom, the other feels a bit blah blah. Ultimate performance requires investment in both – exciting content such as videos, interactive quizzes, testimonials, as well as making sure your sales team have the competence and competence to pro-actively convert that buzz into sales.
To Conclude
Very few of us have a digital marketing strategy which is working perfectly.
By understanding your strengths and weaknesses you can better identify areas for improvement, including how to better use digital techniques to grow your audience. In the end it is all about sales performance, so you can create as many leads as you like – your business will still struggle if you can’t maximise the conversion into sales.
Julia/June 2012