Ask Andi: How do we dedicate enough marketing time to grow the business? We are stretched thin, and marketing falls on my desk. This means if I get busy it won’t get done. Will good enough increase revenue?
Thoughts of the Day: Enough marketing is better than perfect. Get clear as to what “marketing” means, in terms of activities. Find out who in your company can help you grow the business. Offload things that you do, so you can focus on marketing. Understand the importance of growth to the future of your business. Top executives need to be involved in social media. 77% of buyers say they are more likely to buy from a company whose CEO uses social media.
Enough marketing is better than perfect
Taking phone calls and doing estimates are usually categorized under sales activities. Building awareness is a marketing activity. Marketing makes it easier to open doors – which is where things cross over from marketing to sales.
Build a list of fast-acting marketing activities that are likely to take minimal effort and produce high results:
- call current customers to ensure they’re happy and then ask for the names of 3 referrals to whom they can introduce you
- pull a list of target suspects based on the demographics of your best customers, and build a repetitive mail, call, email campaign to break through to them
- review lost proposals and prospects from the last 2 years and reach out to them to see if they’re satisfied with the solutions they bought
- review your ads and website to make sure that all offers are compelling and getting the conversion you expected
- buy up product lines – add things that your current customers and prospects want to buy
- hold a get-together for clients and prospects to get them in a room so prospects can hear what a great job you’re doing
Employees don’t all need to be on the front line, talking to potential customers. Save that activity for people who are experienced working with prospects, or people who want to get trained on how to work on new business opportunities. Do talk with everyone in the company about the importance of getting more customers and their role in helping make that happen.
How much marketing is enough?
Make a list of all of the employees in your company. Next to each name write down one or more things that each could do to contribute to marketing. It could be anything from accurately answering questions about products or services to drawing out ideas for advertisements and mailings, to making product samples.
Clear your calendar. Make growth the company’s top priority. Dedicate a major portion of your time to overseeing, facilitating, and participating in marketing activities. Delegate, delegate, delegate.
Avoid spending too much time running around in the field from one account to the next. That may be the least productive thing you can do. Instead, try to anchor yourself in the office for a portion of each week. That’s when you can step back and look at / think through / work on how marketing and sales are doing and what has to change.
Make sure everyone in the company understands that if the business stays flat, the business is actually declining. Inflation causes the cost of overhead to go up, while you’re trying to pay for things with the same old client orders. Don’t let revenue or profits decline year-over-year because marketing can’t fuel growth.
If growth comes in at a slow, steady pace of 5% – 10%, you’re also taking a lot of risks. Any sudden loss of clients, or need to weed out problem ones, and you’re likely to end up with slow growth, no growth, or negative growth. It’s only once revenue growth is in the range of 10% – 15% net that the company can confidently grow faster than any increase in losses or expenses.
