Swindon & Wiltshire News
Expert opinion: How can you be absolutely sure that your marketing is working?
Some business owners I meet have got their marketing pretty well taped. Typically they’re always looking for ways to improve their results as well. And because they’re looking, they will often find some.
Other business owners however find the whole question of marketing a bit tricky. After all it’s easy to put time effort and money into it without really getting anything back.
On top of that you get so many calls from people wanting you to advertise here, improve your website there, invest in Social Media or hire salespeople that it’s hard to know where to start or what to do.
And anyway you’re busy running your business and you get most of your customers from word of mouth.
So if you really want to get better results from your business, what do you need to do?
There are lots of ways, but doing nothing isn’t one of them! You can work on efficiency of course (yours and other people’s), improve pricing, change suppliers, exhort your employees to work harder – or you can keep your head down, work harder and hope.
Here are a few things you can do, starting right now.
1. Understand what’s really creating profit for your business. This means getting your head around some facts. There are really only five things here, in every business:
2. How many new customer enquiries do you get, and where from? This is genuinely new customers, people who haven’t done business with you before.
- How effectively do you convert these enquiries into customers, what is your success rate. (Note – when I ask people this question the most common answer is ‘It’s pretty good’, rather than a number. We need facts.)
- How often do customers do business with you? Think about it this way: if the frequency was going up, or going down, you’d want to know about it!
- What is each sale worth, on average? Again, if this was changing you’d want to know.
- What is your profit margin, and where does it come from?
3. Set a target for improving one or more of these things. Work out what impact this improvement will have on profit. Choose the ‘quick wins’ first.
4. Get on with it. Take action now – clients tell me that they get what they focus on, so get focussed.
5. Keep measuring so that you can see what result you are creating.
6. Keep going; failure is often simply a consequence of giving up too early!
7. Make a commitment to keep learning; how can you improve, what do other people do, how can technology help?
It’s simple enough, but may not be easy. There may be obstacles in your way and sometimes the obstacle is us! But think of it this way; businesses live in a competitive world – if your competitors are working hard at winning new customers, serving them well and profitably – what are the implications for your business and your life?
Nigel Scott offers business and executive coaching in Wiltshire and Swindon. Contact him on 01672 512001 or via email at nigelscott@actioncoach.com
