It’s Monday morning. Time for that all important board meeting. Top of the agenda is the marketing plan followed by consequent ROI. Palms are hot, collar seems tighter and figures don’t seem to add up… and yet again, marketing is coming under fire from sales to prove the value they’re returning to the business.
This scenario can easily be avoided. By following this simple methodology, proving ROI to the board, or your clients, through a clear and concise review document can be easy, have considerable impact and help build the business case for on-going and increased marketing activity in the business.
Proven results are vital in an effective marketing campaign. Therefore regular reviews are critical – depending on size of campaign, these can be done quarterly or bi-annually. A review document can take time to prepare so allow yourself plenty of time. It should incorporate the following:
1. Executive Summary
This offers an overview to the marketing activity and what the review document actually does.
2. Contents
Details what is contained in the document.
3. Objectives
What were the goals behind your marketing campaign? Why did you plan what you did? This should be explained in up to 6 key bullet points.
4. Strategy
Whatever your strategy to build pipeline and prospects, clearly show it here. If that be the AIDA methodology (Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action) of moving prospects through the buying cycle over time, explain how this works and what each stage involves. Ensure you include your metrics.
5. Marketing Activity
This section incorporates the actual marketing activity conducted including the target audience, what regions and verticals were covered and the type of marketing activity, whether that be thought leadership events, strategic lead generation, managed communications, database management, etc
6. Results
The results section is key and makes up the main part of your review. Here you need to demonstrate the prospect community you have created and the sales pipeline built. Here you should list the marketing activity undertaken alongside the outcomes. For example, if this was a thought leadership event programme to the retail audience in UK, detail the theme, venue, speakers, partner involvement (if relevant). Following this should include the number of customers who attended from number of companies and a list of the opportunities identified.
An effective way of showing the board who you have connected with is by including a slide of logos from all the speakers/ partners and prospects engaged. This is a good at-a-glance way of adding credibility to your review.
Furthermore for lead generation results, ensure you include what the target was for sales meetings at the start of the campaign as well as the actual, detailing when, what and who were involved in these meetings. Also include leads which need further nurturing, and marketing qualified leads which are at the earliest stage of development. This will show the marketing funnel which represents the sales pipeline of tomorrow. Highlight which current sales leads are opportunities with a value attached to them.
These results can then be clearly shown in your AIDA scoring template with % conversion rates worked out between each stage (or adapted according to your strategy). This will allow you to predict future results based on future activity.
Now list your wins as well as any key opportunities identified currently being progressed by sales.
Tabulate your results. Clear tables showing your results by listing targets against actuals are a good way to keep busy board members interested. Furthermore simple pie charts effectively show the proportion of your community that you have touched and engaged with.
If your marketing plan covered several regions, break the activities down in each dedicating a slide or two to each.
Make sure you show any visuals you can – a screen shot of your event invitations and online communications campaign can add variation to your review and show creative thinking. Alongside these you can show the results; the size of community the communication went to, the percentage of opens and percentage of articles downloaded.
7. Conclusions
An impactful way of showing your conclusions is to start with a variety of quotes from prospects (if you have requested feedback). This adds additional credibility to the review. Next document the results alongside the marketing and sales funnel – including investment in, and results out. This is a powerful slide as you can show how many qualified leads were sent to sales and the number of confirmed opportunities, with a conversion rate of the two – as well as what’s sitting further up the funnel to keep nurturing. By also tabulating objective against result clearly shows if targets were met. Finally offer 8-10 key bulleted points of the highlights and findings from the campaign.
8. Analysis and Next Steps
An analysis slide can offer suggestions to further the campaign moving forward. This can include what was successful and why, what was perhaps not so successful and lessons learned. Finally, detail the action plan moving forward.
Completing this exercise ensures you create a blueprint document from which future campaign results can be added and built upon. Detailing your marketing objectives, journey and results in a clear way, removes any question marks and ensures confidence, and investment, in future campaigns.
For more information, please go to www.mcdonaldbutler.com or contact Charlotte Holden on 020 8875 2000.
