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InForm Consulting Group was formed in 2006 through the collaboration of four experienced business people, with very complementary skills, to provide practical advice to a wide range of businesses.  The Founding Partners have over 100 years of business experience between them and this allows InForm to provide a complete service to its clients.

InForm Consulting Group provide a wide range of business advisory services to SME’s and consulting services to large companies, including:

  • Business plan development and implementation
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  • Start-up management (business development, departmental, whole company)
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Marketing Measurement Today PDF Print E-mail
Written by Dave Boulter   
Tuesday, 02 March 2010 18:05

One of the problems in marketing your business is measuring the success of the campaign you  have been running.

The most important measurement is your sales. Have sales increased? Have the products or  services you have been marketing been requested more often?

Basic Rule #1: ask your customers. Simply asking customers and recording the results on a  sheet of paper and colating that information at the end of the week. Ask: "How did you here of us/this product/etc?"

In previous posts I have spoken about the various marketing channels. You can read more on this here. If you want to measure the performance of some of the  channels, there are great tools available. The power of tools that are free or cheap on the Internet is truly amazing.

Newsletters: using Electronic Direct Mail to communicate to customers regularly is well  documented. Using a tool such as ConstantContact or MailChimp makes your EDM much easier to  manage and it also comes with great reporting. You can see who opened the email and also what links, within the email, they clicked on. You can see if they reopen and reread the email as well. These are great tools to give you an insight into what interest your customers.

Your website: Google Analytics is a great tool for looking at the performance of your  website. One great innovation is the Site Overlay. Here you can see a percentage indication  of what parts of your website visitors are clicking on. You see your website with an overlay  of statistics. Apart from that you also get the number of people coming to the site, what  pages they are looking at, how long they spend on your site and also if they are coming  direct to the site or via a serach engine or referred from another site.

Here is a simple marketing campaign and you can see how you can measure at various steps.

The campaign consists of a direct mail letter sent to your prospect via a mailing list you  have rented. The letter invites the prospect to come to your website, to a specific landing  page, to get more information and download a guide or article of interest. The download  process collects the prospects name and email address and asks them if they would like  further information. This allows you to market to the prospect in the future at the cheaper  cost using EDM instead of posting letters.

The true measure is the number of email addresses you gain for your database. But maybe you  dont get that many and you would like to understand where the process could be improved? I  will assume that you have implemented Google Analytics on your website already.

  • The first measure to look for is increased traffic to your website in the week following  the physical mailout. You may see a general increase or you may see a spike.
  • next is to look at the traffic coming to the landing page you have setup. If the traffic  is mostly direct, then the URL on the letter you sent would be the most likely driver.
  • If the above two have not happened, then look at the content of your letter. Did it engage  and generate interest? Did it generate enough interest to make the person look up the site  on the internet and put in the URL you sent them? Have another person review the letter,  preferably somebody who does not work in your business or in your industry.
  • Use the Site Overlay on the landing page to see what people clicked on in regards to that  page. Did the message on the landing page drive further interest, enough for somebody to  exchange their email address for that information?


For more information on Google Analytics look under Business Solutions on the Google  homepage.
Last Updated on Tuesday, 02 March 2010 18:09
 
Want to make money through improvement in your operations.....quickly – here’s how. PDF Print E-mail
Written by David Burgess   
Tuesday, 23 February 2010 08:35

What is MORE important – focus on the outcomes or the inputs to your business?  I would argue that the output – e.g. profits or sales is a direct result of what you and your people are working on during the month, in other words the inputs.

The old computer saying – “garbage in garbage out” is true for how we run our businesses.  So how do we know what we should be working on and how do we know it is directly related to my financial performance?

Step One:  Identify the critical things you do in the business – or business processes.

For example a contract builder has about three critical processes to get right –tendering, sub-contractor selection, project management.  These are all processes with inputs, step by step actions and if all are not well executed there is a high risk of losing REAL money.

So, first things first, look at your business and identify those top 5 critical “things” you and your team do each month.  Write each one on a separate sheet of paper. On the left hand side write what you/your team do well; on the right hand side right what you could do better.  Try and fill the sheet for each of your critical processes.

Step Two:  What do I work on FIRST?

It is essential that you DO NOT try to fix everything at once, otherwise you will fail.

Review your five sheets of paper with your critical processes listed.  Select those three that “if we get these right we will make a lot more money.”

Now with these three, review each sheet and highlight the most important What We Do Well and what We Could Do Better.

You now have six critical “things” to measure.

Why do we look at what we do well?  Simply because this is why you are a success, why your customers buy from you and how you are positioned in your market. So KEEP DOING it and let all your people know this is critically important to the success of the business. Also, never take your eyes of these and do not let them slip while you make other improvements.

Step Three:  Measure, Monitor & Remember?

For the six areas you have identified – set up a weekly measuring system for each one. One could be hours spent re-working mistakes.  Get this down and you will make more money.

Report them each week, ideally on a big board so all the team can see.  Have the actions that will be done over the next two weeks written out so everyone knows what is going to happen.

Do this for 3 months and see how you go.  If the three that you do well have stayed flat or improved, FANTASTIC. Likewise if the three you could do better in have improved then FANTASTIC AGAIN.  Your business results will be improving as a direct result of working on the INPUTS.

Remember – celebrate your success with the team and go back to Step One every three to six months.  Within a short period of time your business will be on the path to Excellence.

 
Last Updated on Tuesday, 23 February 2010 17:01
 
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