But where to begin? In order to determine ROI,
you must link your communication to a sales lead and then to
a sale. When you know the cost of the communication and of the
amount of the sale generated by that communication, you can
begin to calculate ROI. But first you have to capture that information,
one sales lead at a time.
 You obtain the sales lead, which is the critical link between
your communication and the actual sale, from the response
mechanisms you build into your communications—like business
reply cards, 800 phone numbers, URLs and e-mails. Ideally,
you want to make capturing this essential response data systemic
to your organization. And that requires thinking about response
mechanisms early in your planning process.
Think of Response Mechanisms Early and Often
If you really want to generate sales leads as a result of
your communications, then you should create them with that
in mind, as opposed to creating communications that build
awareness, educate, etc. Those are very fine goals, and we
should measure how well we achieve those goals. But a brochure
designed to inform will not generate a substantial volume
of sales leads.
If leads are your goal, then you should create communications
that compel prospects to contact your company. And that’s
the trick, isn’t it? Motivating people to involve themselves
so communication becomes two-way (which ultimately leads to
sales).
Consider bribing your prospects with coupons or free trials,
as long as that approach is compatible with your strategy.
Or offer prospects something they need to help them perform
better on the job—like a white paper. If it's valuable
to your target market, you’ll get people to take you
up on your offer. When they do, ask them to give you some
information, just not so much that they'll shy away from responding
at all.
For example, in addition to basic contact information, you'll
want to know if they're thinking about purchasing your type
of product or service any time within the next week or month
or whatever is reasonable in your industry. You may want to
know what kind of budget they have or what particular widget
type they're interested in. Responses to these questions will
help your sales team immeasurably.
The key is to have a system in place to fulfill prospects'
requests promptly, and zip the response information to your
sales team at the speed of light.
Build Response Mechanisms into Everything
If someone contacts your call center with the 800 number that’s
on all your literature, that’s a good thing. But if
someone contacts your call center with a coded 800 number
that’s unique to a specific promotion, then that’s
a very, very good thing.
You’ll know that the prospect called in as a direct
result of promotion A versus promotion B. If you get enough
response to promotion A, you'll know you should invest more
in similar promotions. And if you get enough responses to
promotion B, you might consider scrapping it. Before you do,
though, be sure to give it enough time. You need to know your
market, your sales cycle and your industry to judge whether
an initial small response may add up over time.
 Coding
response mechanisms is the easy part. The hard part is capturing
this data. If a prospect calls a unique 800 number, you need
to coordinate with your call center or customer service department
to ensure that data is recorded.
If you have a unique URL, you’ll need to coordinate
with your IT department. For example, you could code your
ads something like www.yourcompanyname.com/ad2 if your goal
is to direct them to your web site. This way you’ll
know they went to your site as a result of your ad.
Communicators often protest that this kind of follow-up is
not within their purview, but if they want to know ROI, they'll
find a way to make it within their purview. Tracking the numbers
and maintaining the data requires discipline and tenacity,
but a database will ease the pain. When budget time rolls
around, you'll be able to demonstrate a positive ROI to those
in the C-level suite. But best of all, you'll know the ROI
of the components of your marketing communication mix, so
you can adjust your program on an ongoing basis. Over time,
that will give you improved ROMI.
Merry Elrick is President of DataDriven MarCom, Inc.,
www.datadrivenmarcom.com.
The company offers a web database tool that helps B2B marketers
capture and maintain the data they need to determine the ROI
of their communications. Merry welcomes your comments at merry@datadrivenmarcom.com.
|
