December 29th, 2010 
Maria Helm 
When it comes to getting bang for marketing bucks, too many business owners close their eyes, throw up their hands and resign themselves to guesswork. But if marketing efforts are ruled by luck or instinct, at best, you squander money. At worst, your sales head south.
In today’s business climate, make sure that your marketing tactics can be easily measured– easily tracked, quantifiable promotions such as coupons, survey-driven Web promotions and partnership bounce-back promotions.
Here are five other ways to benchmark your marketing campaigns without breaking the bank or overburdening your staff (or yourself ).
1. Get a handle on costs and customers. With business having slowed, many owners are so laser-focused on sales that they forget the other crucial stuff. What could be more important than sales? Well, profits. Sometimes, the more you sell, the more you lose. Before planning marketing campaigns or mounting promotions, analyze the cost of marketing versus the profit it must yield. How much, for instance, will it cost to acquire a new customer? Who is your potential new customer? What will get that potential customer’s attention? Most importantly, after getting attention, what will drive a response and close the deal? Find out.
2. Set clear goals and define success. The return on marketing investments you seek is likely predicated on your overall strategy. Benchmarks, after all, are set against a standard — be it an industry or individual ruler. Formulating a marketing strategy that articulates a set of outcomes has to be the starting point. After that, “return on investment” for marketing can mean many things, including: Before spending a dime, make sure your expectations make sense for the marketing you plan.
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If the people already know you, buy from you and trust you, you can ask them to do things like sign up for a managed or retained service, or perhaps buy additional or upgraded products. That same request on a cold list (or list of people who don’t know you) is very difficult and in most times will not work. You’ll need to use email to drive them to a website to sign up for a free “something”, download a free report, sign up for a seminar, or some other ‘baby step’ action that will lead toward making the sale.
More and more small business owners are finding ways to cut costs. However, there are areas in your business that you can’t afford not to spend money on such as Marketing. There are ways to get the word out about your business that won’t cost you an arm and a leg. If you have a tiny marketing budget, you can try the following examples. I’m pretty sure there are other entrepreneurs that may find a few marketing ideas to try as well.
