Hospital waiting lists, train punctuality, school exam results. Today it seems we measure everything. The idea has been central to business theory ever since they realised that they needed something to teach on an MBA course. But how useful is measuring in marketing? Can you quantify marketing activity or is it, because it's an investment in the future, unpredictable and, therefore, unmeasurable? Jim Pollard listens to some measured responses.
Once upon a time, there lived a marketing magician. He was very clever and understood customers and clients instinctively. He performed grand illusions with image. He pulled brands from hats and plucked campaigns from his cuff like a string of handkerchiefs. His colleagues were amazed. They couldn't see how the marketing magician performed his tricks at all.
"Wow," they said.
And then one day along came a great, big, ugly recession and they all woke up.
"A marketer needs to demonstrate his or her value otherwise someone will take the budget away," says Kevin Wheeler of marketing and business development consultants Wheeler Associates bluntly. "You need to put systems in place that enable you to track the results of your firm's marketing activity.
"It's easier in some areas than others but it's amazing how many people don't even have a simple list of potential clients they're targeting. Find out who the decision makers are and count how many of these you have a relationship with. If it's just 20% set a target of increasing it to 50%. It's blatant common sense." A tightly targeted list will also save on the costs of direct marketing, including mailshots. In other words, that boring old database work is worth it.
"A lot of marketers, especially those with an FMCG background, think marketing is about profile, image and branding," says Wheeler. "In professional services, it isn't. It's about relationships. Our research shows that buyers want to be approached directly in a way that helps them to see how working with your firm is good for their business. Seminars, newsletters and speaking at conferences are more effective here than the sort of big advertising and sponsorship driven campaigns that make the mainstream marketing press. There may be more kudos in this and it looks good on your CV but while this approach is fine for selling baked beans, it's not sophisticated enough to get across the key messages when you're marketing professional services."
If it's not about big, glamorous campaigns, it is, according to Sue Bramall of law firm Pinsent Curtis Biddle, about systematic, routine work over a sustained period. "There are three stages at which we should measure: generating opportunities, converting them into sales and keeping clients happy," she says, "and we need to measure over the long-term to see genuine trends. Snap shots are not always useful. Collecting information as a matter of routine is also a more effective use of resources. For example, new assignment forms need to ask for basic marketing information such as where the business came from."
Bramall stresses the importance of making everyone a marketer. "We need to work with IT and finance so that they understand why we need them to collect certain information. We also need to work closely with partners."
Lori Costello, Managing Consultant in the Strategy and Marketing Practice at PA Consulting Group - a leading management, systems and technology consulting firm - takes this further. "It's often difficult to get time with senior people to develop the most appropriate marketing materials," she says. "Therefore, such activities should be built into staff appraisals to incentivise them to provide content so that the marketing function can do their job effectively.
"A lawyer is trained in law, not in selling legal services, so if marketing leads are not being converted into sufficient sales there may be a need for sales training. You can only identify this need through setting targets and measuring results. Just measuring sales against marketing spend doesn't tell you much. I'm more interested in the lost opportunities. Where are we not converting and why?"
The first is a quantitative question that can only be answered through systematic counting; the second a qualitative one that requires knowledge and experience of both marketing and the market. It makes the point nicely that it is not just what you measure that matters but what you do with the information once you've got it. Take the example of tendering. Quantitative questions to ask include how much time is spent on a proposal, what proportion are successful, which type of business is being won and so on. Working out why this is happening is where you earn your corn.
"The idea that marketing is mystical is nonsense," scoffs Wheeler. It may be an investment in the future but without measurement how do you know if your marketing is working now? You can even measure the woollier things like image through market research. Many marketing directors don't bother with this even after they've spent millions on a campaign." He concludes: "Professional services marketing is different from consumer marketing and people get found out eventually. That's why there's such a high staff turnover. In the legal sector the life expectancy of a marketing director is just 18 months."
So while the big campaigns and heady expense accounts may be unnecessary, there will always be a need for the marketer with a sharp nose for his or her particular market. Lori Costello, 12 years in the business, says: "People are much more interested in measuring, especially in a downturn. It's obvious. You need cold facts to prove to the financial director that the firm is getting a decent ROMI - return on marketing investment. Nevertheless, the nature of markets is dynamic and elusive so there will always be a role for instincts and gut feelings based on experience."
Good advice. Just keep those rabbits firmly under your hat.
Test yourself
How much of the following do you already know and what could you find out? How easy would it be?
- what's your average fee per client?
- what proportion of your business is one-off assignments?
- what proportion of your business are your top five clients?
- which is your fastest growing area of work?
- what percentage of proposals do you win?
- how much business has direct mail generated this year?
(Thanks to Sue Bramall of law firm Pinsent Curtis Biddle.)
This article originally appeared in Professional Marketing, the worldwide journal for marketing professional services. For more information please visit www.pmint.co.uk
