Marketsafe’s research points to a ‘customer intimacy’ gap where firms fail to adequately investigate and qualify potential new business opportunities, with many companies neglecting to do their homework before approaching a new business target. Less than half (43 per cent) go to the customer’s web site before contacting them and a similar proportion don’t check who is the most appropriate person to approach. Shockingly, 16 per cent confess to conducting no research whatsoever into a prospective business customer before approaching them. Andrew Harris, Marketsafe’s MD, says, There is an attitude, particularly with direct marketing, to target as many businesses as possible and wait for ‘the two per cent’ to reply.
Sadly, many businesses don’t get tough on marketing until problems have clearly developed. Clientmind, a firm specialising in auditing high-value B2B clients’ activity has plenty of examples, such as the large financial organisation that couldn’t understand why its lovely new brochures were being chucked in the bin.
Says Clientmind director, Ian McKechnie, They knew their old brochures were being binned by clients without even being read, so vibrant new colours replaced the dingy old brown, and hopes were riding high for some very positive feedback. We interviewed 30 client firms about the new brochures and not one of them cared what colour they were or even what was in them.
The problem was they didn’t know, like or trust the firm. They didn’t get the company’s brand message and they seldom got a visit so why should they bother reading their brochures?
Based on this vital feedback, Clientmind’s advice was to prioritise marketing spend around ‘getting out there’ i.e. more conference speaking and more customer visits to demonstrate help and expertise and to strengthen brand messaging. Without the audit, the client firm could have been stumbling along in the dark indefinitely.
Simply put, marketing audits mean doing a ‘sanity check’ with clients. Instead of second-guessing how they are receiving your messages, find out for sure.
Marketing audits are lists and measurements of what you do to get your message out there. A solid starting point is to find out what your marketplace currently thinks about your efforts from brochures to conference speaking. How are you doing according to the target audience? Do they perceive your firm as visible, relevant and different?
You may appear to cover every base from blogging to breakfast seminars, but do clients really notice or even care? McKechnie asks. Your marketing audit may look good to you, but it may not be effective. You need to ask prospects directly about what they need from you if they are to buy your services.
Getting primary feedback means interviewing current, lost and not-won clients whether face-to-face or on the phone. To ensure clients feel free to speak their minds and to remove any danger of bias, there is clearly value in using an independent third-party research firm.
These will often perform an internal marketing audit free of charge or at little cost, flagging up areas for concern that then need to be tested externally on clients such as a brochure or website that appears to focus more on ‘what we do’ than ‘what’s in it for you’. The auditors would then charge for an external study to gather data from the company’s clients on how well the marketing materials work.
For those wishing to do the initial groundwork themselves, small business advisor Fraser Hay offers a free downloadable marketing audit at www.leadgenerationmba.com/freebie.htm. The tool comprises 100 questions, giving businesses a snapshot of why certain parts of their marketing function are not generating the desired results. Once you know what isn’t working, the next step is to create a plan on how to address the points you’ve identified and how you’re going to resource the plan, Hay notes.
One audit, for example, told international communications and IT hosting specialist, Easynet, that its sponsorship of the British Olympic Association had generated 30 per cent of the brand awareness for its broadband services. This high response was such a surprise that Easynet has now continued its sponsorship activities with a similar arrangement with the World Rally Championships (see www.b2bm.biz).
Easynet, which uses marketing audits to nip disappointing campaigns in the bud, also uses the discipline internally to monitor and boost employee satisfaction. Our objectives are to improve this year-on-year so we work hard to identify problems, says European marcoms director Julian Laister. Feedback has resulted in regular roadshows where executives travel around to meet staff.
An important benefit of marketing audits that should not be underestimated is their power in propelling marketing higher up the board’s agenda. They force marketing departments to consider whether their activities are aligned with real business objectives, with measurable impact. When this has been measured, addressed and improved, marketing’s credibility and leverage with the board improves too, as Paul Hope, UK marketing manager at IT outsourcing firm, Cognizant has found. It gives us more status, he says, noting that in the last nine to 12 months since he launched an ‘aggressive’ marketing drive including extensive auditing his department has achieved ‘trusted advisor’ status within the business.
We’re now fully aligned to the business’s objectives, he adds. We spend less time discussing brochures and events and more on aligning ourselves with our target markets.
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