Improve Marketing Results: Marketing Consultant

When I sat down to write this article I was conscious of the time constraints that we all face. So here I’m asking for just a 60 minute investment to make a significant impact on your business.

If you spend a concentrated 15 minutes on each of the areas discussed below I guarantee you will come up with ways you can get more from your marketing investment.

DECIDE a compelling message
What is the single most important message you want clients and prospects to know about you and your business?

Grab a piece of paper – write down everything that’s occurring to you. Ask others in the office to shout out their own answers to the question. Consider what your best clients say about your service too. Write it all down.

Now for the hard bit – look through your list and pick out the ONE thing you want your business to be known for. Bear in mind it needs to be something that matters to your customers, not just something that matters to you.

You’ve now got the essence of your unique selling point and something that you should be communicating at every opportunity.

DEFINE your ideal client
Who would be your ideal client? Create a visual picture in your mind’s eye. Describe them in terms of the age, sex, job title. If you sell to businesses consider also the size and type of business, who the decision makers are, the age of the company, its structure (ie is it family owned or a plc?). Consider all the facts about your ideal client – and write them down. It’s unlikely you’ll have a single ‘ideal client’. For example my ideal clients include: niche law firms run by men who have marketing ideas but need someone who can put those ideas into practice, financial services businesses with a local client base who want to attract regional business and IT companies wanting to dominate in a particular market niche.

Now think about the problems that your ideal client might experience or the opportunities that you / your product can deliver to you ideal client.

List as many potential ‘points of contact’ as you can for each ‘ideal client’ group. What do they read? What events do they visit? Which websites might they use? Who advises them? What professional bodies are they members of?

Do this quickly – you’ve only got 15 minutes remember – but by the end you should have the basis of a series of marketing actions you can take to reach your ideal client – as well as the bones of the message you need to communicate.

DETERMINE the measurements you need
List all the ways you measure your current marketing activity. In terms of sales figures, number of visitors to your website, number of new enquiries each month and so on.

Are you doing any marketing activity that you don’t currently measure? Are you advertising in Yellow Pages for example – if so do you measure how many enquires you get as a result? I ask this question because I know 90% of people reading this won’t have measures in place to quantify the effectiveness of their marketing.

Now is your time to put that right.

Come up with 3 new measures you need to monitor the effectiveness of your marketing. Decide how you will gather and report this information and let others know in the business you will be doing this. Add it to the agenda for your regular meetings, discuss the measures at your board meeting, do whatever it takes to put a focus on measuring the effectiveness of your marketing activity.

TIP: for any marketing managers reading this or anyone who is trying to persuade their boss to invest more in marketing this is probably one of the most important things you can do. After all unless you can ‘prove’ the return on investment you are going to struggle to increase it.

DRAFT a plan of action
If you’ve spent the last 45 minutes on the suggested tasks above you will have a number of actions leaping out at you. You might have discovered that you aren’t communicating your key message on your website clearly enough, or that you have an opportunity to reach your ideal client at an event later in the year.

If you want to make the most of that time you now need to commit to doing something with the information you’ve got.

I suggest you draw up an action plan for the next month – what steps will you take each day to move your business forward? Write yourself a plan, put the tasks in your diary, maybe even share it with other people to get their commitment.

In my experience most business owners don’t lack marketing ideas – generally they have loads of them. But the difference between winners and losers is that the winners put those ideas into practice.

Suggested Further Reading:

Article written by Teresa Harris, Second Opinion Marketing. Teresa is an independent marketing consultant working with professional practices, small businesses and public sector bodies to develop effective marketing plans which achieve their business objectives.

As a marketing coach Teresa works with new marketing managers and small business owners to enhance their marketing performance.

Article first appeared in Practical Marketing E-Bulletin September 2008. Subscribe to Practical Marketing here.