Top five tips on how to improve your marketing ROI

20-08-2009

ROI You may be looking at ways to save money on marketing at the moment. Rather than cutting down on campaigns, take a step back and analyse your strategy and the recent response you have had to current and past campaigns. Put measurement procedures in place to monitor the responses to each campaign. Use this information to improve the decision making process and the actual return you get from your next campaign.

Marketing tactically has reached the forefront this year as customer buying habits have changed dramatically. Now more than ever before your marketing has to be proactive as well as responding to current and future trends. Outlined below are some tips and ideas (and maybe reminders) on how to hone your marketing activity to dramatically improve the return on investment.

1. Split test your marketing material

Test your latest message on a small section of your database...

Test your latest message on a small section of your database to see what response you get. If it's an email marketing campaign, test different subject lines and send on various days of the week. If it's direct mail, try sending a different message to two halves of your database and see how the response differs from each section. By doing this you are testing both the message and the target before you commit to a larger campaign which will save time and money.

2. How clean is your data?

Before embarking on a large campaign go through your database and clean up the contacts. Make sure you have appropriate contact names and if you have email addresses in your database contact the list and ask if they are happy to receive regular emails from you. Your hit rate will drastically improve if the recipients are expecting to receive regular correspondence from you and the list is up to date. Segment the database and label it into sectors, age ranges and locations. This will help you target your marketing with a specific campaign rather than mass mailing everyone with a single generic message.

Use your sales database to measure which marketing activity resulted in actual sales

3. Identify the winners and losers in your marketing strategy

Track the response to your marketing campaigns by channel. Use the data you receive to find out which marketing has generated the most response. Go one step further and use your sales database to measure which marketing activity resulted in actual sales. Once you have this data at your fingertips you can make informed decisions on future marketing investments. Cut back on the areas not bringing in the results and allocate the spend onto the most successful areas. Keep an eye on it however, as consumer buying habits are constantly changing. What has worked this quarter may not work as well in the next. Using data to manage your response levels will help you predict buying trends for the future. Being aware of occurrences that may affect buying habits such as seasonal events, school holidays and peak selling periods for your customers, will enable you to prepare for busy periods and plan for increased activity for when the telephone goes quiet.

Track your next marketing campaign

Try recording the calls that come in from advertising and monitoring how the sales team are responding to enquiries

4. Inspire the sales team

Are your ads getting the telephone to ring but not resulting in sales? Try recording the calls that come in from advertising and monitoring how the sales team are responding to enquiries. They may need a refresher course on how to handle internet enquiries as today’s consumer is price check savvy and most likely to be ready to buy, armed with information gleaned from the internet. The only problem is they have shopped around first and are fully aware of what deal they want and how much they are willing to pay for it. If your sales team are not adept at responding to this type of enquiry and overcoming objections, they may need some extra training. By listening in to sales calls you can identify any areas of weakness and iron out issues as they arise. This will save money on marketing to generate enquiries that aren’t being converted into sales.

Listen to your sales enquiries

Email is a great way of keeping your name in front of previous enquiries and past customers

5. Keep in touch

Using the data you have generated through past sales and previous enquiries is vital for keeping in touch with ready to buy customers. Email this section of your database with regular updates on new products and services that they may be interested in. Design an email campaign around this sector and encourage them to buy from you if they haven’t yet made their decision. Email is a great way of keeping your name in front of previous enquiries and past customers. Keep the design the same each time and try to send on the same day each week or month to remain familiar. The marketing campaign that lead this customer to your door will still be relevant for return on investment purposes so make the most of every contact you get even if it has gone cold.

Find out more about tracking your next marketing campaign

To see how we can help you improve your marketing ROI, please call us on 0845 120 7442.

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Comment by Andrew Watkin	27-08-2009 17:30:08
Yes, some very useful and simple ideas. It is always the obvious that is overlooked.

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