This period is a great opportunity for marketers to assess what has been working for them and what should be axed ahead of the busy final months in the run up to the festive break.
The issue of what channels are working for you is even more relevant as budgets get squeezed. The recent developments in the Eurozone continue to be a concern to most manufacturers as the uncertainty on the continent has affected export sales and whilst domestic sales increased in the last quarter the Euro crisis needs sorting one way or another.
We speak a lot about ‘return on investment’ and the following article is very thought provoking. Maven suggest that ROI (or in their language ROMI) can often be a constricted way at looking at marketing decisions and that you should never forget the value that one channel may deliver in brand awareness and recognition even if another appears to be the lead generation channel. I agree that it is hard to sometimes pin a lead and sale to one specific marketing channel and a degree of flexibility is required but also think ROI is vital for identifying high cost ineffective marketing channels. The comment at the foot of the article from Randolph also worries me, I think it is vital to attribute a lead or sale even if this means quizzing a potential client about it, it doesn’t have to form part of the initial conversation.
With Maven’s suggestions in mind Marketing Sherpa undertook a very interesting survey which looked at the effectiveness as well as difficulty of various lead generation channels. The survey results can be read in this article or seen in the image below. I would suggest anything to the left could be dropped whilst channels bottom right carried out internally and top right are given to arkom to implement.