How do you know if all of this effort is effective?

Because marketing has so much to do with making investments, setting out your stall and waiting for customers to come and people, both your people and theirs it can become difficult to actually work out exactly what is and what isn't effective. Somebody famous, famously said I know that 50% of my marketing is effective, if only I knew which 50%. What you can guarantee is that he invested 50% of his time and budget and energy and motivation into marketing that failed.

Marketing is demanding on budgets, time, energy and motivation and whilst measuring the effectiveness of your marketing will never be a precise science it is important that you make some effort to establish what does and what doesn't work. Traditionally, measuring the effectiveness of your marketing has relied on asking respodents how they heard of you, which often fails for two reasons, you and them, you may forget to ask, and they might genuinely not know the answer. By using CRM systems, dedicated telephone lines, dedicated e-mail addresses, offer codes, web analytics and email reporting tools you can start to get a grip on the effectiveness of your efforts. Somebody else said if you can't measure it you can't manage it, our advice is if you can't manage you should think long and hard about doing it.

Watch this space for more ideas on how to measure your marketing effectiveness and some examples.

To find out how you would benefit from measuring your marketing call The Effective Marketing Company now on 08452 243702 for a free consultation.