Is Your Marketing Working for You?

One of the significant consistent spends for your business is likely to be your marketing. Good marketing is a necessity, and it’s an investment that should (in theory) pay for itself easily by generating more revenue from new customers, but if your marketing isn’t working for you, then you’re simply giving money away.

Today we’re looking at how you can judge if your marketing is doing the job it needs to, and make sure you’re spending your money wisely.

Return on Investment

One of the most important metrics you need to be aware of is ROI: return on investment. This is the measure of the money your marketing spend brings in. If you divide the revenue you attribute to your marketing by the amount you’re spending on that marketing you’ll get a figure. Multiply that figure by 100 and you’ll get your ROI as a percentage. 100% is a full return on investment: the bare minimum you need to look for. The further over 100% your ROI is, the better your marketing is performing. If it drops under 100% you are losing money on your marketing and may need to make certain changes.

The problem here is in deciding how much of your revenue is attributable to your marketing. You can use cookies dropped on browsers computers to track the links between some adverts and some sales, but this doesn’t hold if the ad doesn’t cause a fast response. If it lingers with the customer and they make a purchase later on a different device or even in person, that link is softer, more arguable. 

Brand Health

The strength of your brand is strongly affected by your marketing, and running brand tracker research can give you a near real-time understanding of how strong people perceive your brand to be. These surveys ask respondents to rate your business on the key qualities for your brand, and then against your key competitors in the industry, giving you both an absolute and relative reading on your brand’s health.It’s valuable carrying out brand tracking research as you launch new marketing campaigns. This lets you see, almost in real time, the impact your marketing has on people’s perceptions of your brand. If your new campaign undermines the brand image you’ve built up, or causes people to perceive your brand as weaker or less desirable than your competitors then your marketing isn’t performing like it needs to!