How Does Your Marketing Measure Up?

Here we are, it’s part four of the TLC Business Marketing Formula.

It’s results time.This is what it all boils down to. Has your preparation, inspiration and perspiration paid off? Has it delivered a return on investment (ROI)? Surely you want to know where all the time and money has gone and what it has achieved?

Well, it’s amazing how many businesses don’t ever find this out. Sadly, very little marketing is actually measured, with the success of far too many campaigns simply rated according to gut feeling and assumption.

This is where businesses seem to get stuck in a cycle of marketing that doesn’t work or achieves very little. It’s usually because they’ve never spent any time evaluating why, and taking steps to avoid making the same mistakes again.

Like preparation, evaluation is critical but all too often neglected. Many small businesses seem to overlook it because they deem it too costly and time consuming, or see it as something that only applies to the ‘big boys’ with their multi million pound marketing budgets. Wrong! Measuring results should be doubly important to small businesses because success, and often survival, depends on their marketing delivering a return.

It’s all about being rigorous, organised and putting systems in place to do the job. It needn’t cost a great deal of time or money. Google Analytics is free. Putting a code on a piece of direct mail is straightforward. Asking your customers for that code shouldn’t be common practice. Tracking who’s opening your emails is all down to using the right software and taking full advantage of the tools available to you.

There you have it – results! We love them and you should too, because nothing beats seeing your hard work, time and money pay off.

Rebecca Pash, Marketing Manager, TLC Business