What Makes Effective Marketing Effective?

Marketing is difficult. Yet, there are ways one can make more effective inroads. In this article, the author makes four suggestions to make your marketing efforts more effective. If the ultimate goal of your marketing effort is to increase the number of leads/prospects in your pipeline, the article includes some metrics one can measure to assess success.

Do you know what is working and what is not with your marketing and practice development efforts? For many business valuation practitioners, the honest answer is that they cannot answer that question; not really. They have a “feeling.” What can you do about that?

Marketing and practice development. You are investing time and money in these areas. Thus, it is critical that you measure results in each avenue you’re pursuing. This allows you to refine your tactics; to learn from the campaigns that are not working and invest more resources in the ones that are.

If I have learned anything from my marketing efforts, it’s this:

1. Knowing what to do is not that hard but being effective is darn hard.
2. Effective marketing is not one thing; it’s never just one thing.
3. Effective marketing is many things done over time; consistently and persistently.
4. Effective marketing is measured and recalibrated; and then measured again.

So, here are four suggestions to make your marketing efforts more effective:

1. Elevating your game requires a combination of tactics, e.g., speaking and writing. Stick to your strengths and manage around your weaknesses.
2. If what you’re doing isn’t working, it may be the execution, not the tool. Here’s a test: Put yourself in the shoes of your leads, prospects, clients, and referral sources. How would you react to the message and the medium you’re using?
3. Do not embrace a technique just because someone else is using it; or dismiss one just because someone said it didn’t work for them. Find out what works for you.
4. Put metrics in place to measure your results. You can’t manage what you don’t measure.

If the ultimate goal of your marketing effort is to increase the number of leads/prospects in your pipeline, here are some metrics you can measure (depending on your tactics):

• Number of additions to firm mailing list
• Number of LinkedIn connection requests made/accepted
• Number of new website visitors
• Average time on website
• Number of articles written
• Number of LinkedIn posts written
• Number of presentations given
• Number of videos made
• Number of podcasts been on

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Everyone has a different idea of what a successful practice is. The practice you want is personal because it is based on what “successful” means to you. I help practitioners focus on the strategies and tactics to build/grow their versions of successful practices. If you want some help with that, e-mail me at rod@rodburkert.com.