Measure your marketing with a next to nothing budget...

Tracking studies, media mix models, concept testing - are all tools to ensure that your advertising and marketing plan is successful and effective.

But what if you are like me, a marketer with a small marketing budget….and a smaller (or should I say non-existing) measurement budget? Are you doomed to have to rely on guess work, intuition and will you always have to battle the sales team or senior management to prove that you contributed to sales? Not really. While you may not be able to quantify impact and efficacy at the level that some of those above mentioned tools can, you can certainly track your efficacy by doing some simple things.

1. Ask your prospects or customers how they heard about you. Most will be happy to tell you.

2. Track - while you may not always know how many people you truly reached with your outreach effort, make sure you map traffic against when you are in the media. If you are doing things right, you should see a spike in traffic – whether its traffic to a store, to a website or calls to a call center.

3. Collect information of your prospects wherever possible... and then map it to your account owner base. Did Mr. Jones from ABC Street, XYZ town who ordered an enrollment kit via the direct mail flyer open an account?

4. Reach out to existing customers via a basic web survey and ask them to tell you what they think about your brand, product or service. If you can convince them that you will take action on their feedback, they will be happy to share their true feeling

5. Don’t hesitate to do a quick focus group - find a group of people in your office who represent your target audience. And ask them what they think of the new creative you are looking to launch. Their feedback may surprise you. Sure, the results are not scientific - but they can be indicative.

6. Set up a special #800 number or vanity URL for your advertising. This will help you track web traffic or interest that can be related to the advertising.

7. Compare data against the historical data that you may have access to and try to analyze why there may be changes – could it be because of a coupon promotion or a radio ad. Be sure to consider some external factors like weather or the economy.

Not all of these may apply to you… But no matter how small you are – whether you a small for profit business, or a not-for- profit business— you will be able to import these ideas to substantiate your efforts or course correct.

Audience Dilemma

Here is what marketers have to decide very often, especially when their target audience consists of a diverse demographic - Should my initiative/ communication cater to the lowest common denominator or to the majority?

In this particular case, we are redesigning our product website and the question of the hour is - should we have a Flash on the homepage or not? One group feels that not everyone has Flash on their computers and so we should just stick with a static image....where as the Flash proponents feel that Flash will add to the visual appeal of the website and also provide messaging opportunities...

While my common sense usually pushes me in the direction of simplification and "idiot proofing" everything....I am with the Flash proponents on this one. Why? 85% of internet users have Flash. And most importantly, it adds value by not just making the page more visually appealing but helps delivering multiple messages ( for example, each frame can address a different benefit)

Here is an interesting article that speaks to the issue: http://www.businessknowhow.com/internet/flash.htm

Common Sense Tip of the Week

When it comes to website design… we all want a cutting edge, cool and sexy website for our products. Our wish lists include fancy animation, music, video and other popular web 2.0 tools. However, what we forget to consider is – who is the audience? Is my wish list really relevant to my target audience or does it just make me look good in the board room?

For e.g. when building a hospital website, focus on organization of information, on font size, on content, on search optimization. Spend the marketing dollars to build tools that can help the patients and their families…rather than fancy flash intros.

If you find your self saying to yourself, I know that… I urge you to think again. The best of us fall into the trap of focusing on what we want for our firms/products website rather than focusing on what our audience wants from the website