Business Consultants Edinburgh

(article written Dec 2003)
With Christmas just around the corner few of us are probably spending much time thinking about the New Year – we’re too busy trying to wrap everything up, fulfil orders and deliver projects to deadlines. But it strikes me that the end of the year is as good a time as any to review the success or otherwise of your marketing during the last 12 months.

For most small businesses and professionals it’s time to take stock and think about where to focus your marketing effort and investment in the future. And during the Christmas break it’s a good time to step outside your business for a moment and try to see things from the customer point of view. Even large business will benefit from the opportunity to pause and review following the simple steps suggested here.

What’s Worked and What Hasn’t?
A good starting point might be to make a simple list (or review your plan, if you have one) of all the marketing activities you’ve been involved in during 2003. Don’t miss anything out. Think about press releases or newspaper coverage you may have had; advertising and sponsorship; leaflets you produced and distributed; direct mail; your website and other on-line advertising and promotions, partnerships you built and networking events you attended.

You may end up with quite a long list. Which brings me to the first point I suppose – has your marketing activity been focussed enough and have you got the best results?

Measuring Success
Think about how much you spent on each activity and review the actual amount of response or business each activity generated – what do you mean you didn’t measure it! If this is true you won’t be alone but now might be a good time to put it right.

Point two and learning for 2004 – make sure you can measure the effectiveness of all advertising and marketing that you do – and if you want to be ruthless about it - if you can’t measure it don’t do it. Most small businesses I’ve worked with can find a simple system for monitoring response (whether they use their accounts system or set up a more sophisticated database) and they quickly realise the effort in putting in the system has been well worth it when they realise the thing that cost the most has been producing the worst results and some of the things that cost very little can really reap rewards.