Marketing in a new economy. The power of planning.

We’ve presented Marketing in a New Economy – 7 “Must Do” Tactics in webinars and throughout a number of speaking engagements and thought it’s be helpful to summarize some key points for all.

The first topic we addressed is the importance of creating and executing against a thoughtful strategy. I shared with attendees the PMG Marketing Quadrants (seen below) that I developed over the years and use as a guide in creating my “acquisition” strategies.

Marketing in our current economy requires that you drive extreme efficiencies into your process. A gun shot approach – a little classified ad her, a keyword there etc… — will not serve you well in the long run. I have empirical data to prove this. Invest a bit of time on the front end to establish your strategy and you will have the tools and foundation to profoundly impact your Return on Investment (ROI).

VALUE:

Lets begin with the perimeter of the box. The first step is to establish a powerful value proposition (VALUE = BENEFITS / COST. The more benefits you provide to outweigh the cost, the greater the value proposition). To be clear, this is an area that is seriously flawed in our industry. I’ve reviewed websites and marketing collateral and have gone through the sales process of too many business center operators to count. Just about every operator is trying to compete on providing fully furnished, staffed and equipped offices with flexible terms, on-demand. No wonder we’re being asked to slash prices. We’ve completely commoditized our offering! So, the point here is to establish a powerful and compelling value proposition that blows the competition out of the water. We’ll review some steps in establishing your Unique Bundle of Promises in a later blog post.

KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS:

Let’s move to the bottom of the quadrant. Every penny that you spend in marketing should be tracked and measured. There are so many tools today that there really is no excuse not to know the impact of your efforts on your desired results. So every time we embark on a marketing program, we clearly articulate our key performance indicators — those things we’re going to measure — and attribute a target for each indicator. I will go into metrics in greater detail under a separate blog post.

TARGET AUDIENCE:

All the while, we are also thinking about our target audience. This group needs to be defined. In our world there are several audiences, end-users (transactional), end-uses (more strategic who will use our complete product range), entities who can refer business (brokerage, property owners, our own customers) etc…

THE ACTUAL QUADRANTS:

Let’s move onto the quadrants. You’ll notice here a relationship between activities that we need to increase inquiries so that we can “eat now” and activities to build the brand for later. The ratio of resources that you invest in each area will depend on your overall business objectives. I can tell you however that even if you decide only to spend 5% of your budget in growing the brand… you must clearly understand what your brand promise is… That messaging must be weaved into every single touch point.

CONVERSION:

You’ll always want to invest 150% in driving leads and another 150% in ensuring maximum conversion. 300% you say? I’m really illustrating a point here – in that, if you achieve maximum leads and maximum conversion then your sales will exponentially increase. So, focus on driving high-impact efficiencies in both areas.

RESOURCES:

Finally – you need to establish the RIGHT resources to ensure success. People always ask me about budget. How much money do I need? How many people? There is no magic formula. It really depends on your business objectives. But, once you establish your resources be sure to track all expenditures (time, money etc.. ) Just as with the sales process – the marketing process can and should drill down to the numbers… And, anything you can’t measure should not be done.

Take a few moments to plan your strategy prior to executing and I assure you – you will reap the benefits.