Make them believe!

This blog is brought to you by BrightBlue Marketing team member, Andrea Lamarsaude.

In today’s challenging economic times now more then ever marketers need to be able to prove their worth. Stakeholders, both internal and external, want tangible proof that marketing adds value. How can marketers make them believe?

In her recent article “The Believers Versus the Non-Believers: Convincing Internal Partners that Marketing Can Help Drive Business Results,” Kimberley Whitler, Contributor at Forbes cites that, “scholars found that marketers have greater influence when they are more accountable and innovative (Verhoef and Leeflang 2009). Whitler recommends several ways to “drive greater impact and influence the non-believers” one of which is to speak to stakeholders in their language. For example, “when talking with finance…use data that shows how marketing is contributing to the firm’s overall financial performance.”

What will that Tweet get me in return?

Social media has become an integral part of most everyone’s marketing mix. But how do you measure results? Amanda Stillwagon at Small Business CEO has a great list of tools a business can use to measure their social media campaigns results:

1. Addictomatic – this is a news aggregator but can also be used to monitor social media. You just need to put in the name of a topic (i.e: name or category of your business) and you’ll receive the latest feeds about that certain topic.
2. Analytic.ly – this tool gives you a customized report on your targeted audience depending on your campaign platform. You can create a customized analytics platform and search keywords and @names for a price. As of press time, the Social Media Command Center and Viral Analytics is priced at $9 a month.
3. Grader – this is a cornucopia of tools which helps measure and analyzes how effective are the marketing strategies you use for your business.
4. Google Feedburner – this is a free tool from where you can burn feeds from your sites and you would be able to track how many subscribers you have, check how many views and clicks are generated from your sites and even track your podcast downloads.
5. Social Networking Media ROI Calculator – this is a free online tool from DragonSearch which calculates all your social media efforts and its relation to how much you are spending on networking sites.
6. Twitalyzer – this tool starts with a free trial but you would need to subscribe to get automatic updates, full data export, email support and other services. The price for subscription depends on whether you are using the tool as an individual, business or agency. Basically, this tool informs you of your impact score or your percentile rank, which kind of influencer you are, your location, among others.

Stillwagon says, “Analyzing the metrics is just a part of the bigger picture.” It’s important to “incorporate the metrics you got from the monitoring tools you use and see how they affect sales and customer retention and other output goal markers you have.”

In his article “How Does Marketing Provide Value?” R.L. Remenyi, a Contributor at eHow sums it up quite nicely:

Recognition

Marketing plays a critical role in most businesses' success. Marketing provides value in many ways, but the biggest way is through recognition. You know you have a successful marketing plan and strategy in place when your company is recognized and your brand is trusted.
A good example is Google. Many people say they are going to "Google" something, but what they really mean is that they are going to do an Internet search.
Most companies won't see Google's level of recognition, but a good marketing plan can help you increase recognition and, you hope, sales.



Build Trust

If you have good marketing techniques in place, you will start building recognition, but you want the type of recognition that will help build trust in your company. Trust will prompt people to put their faith in your product or services and choose you over your competition.
To build trust, you must employ marketing techniques that hit your target market with precisely the message you want to convey. You want to set yourself apart from your competition.



Gain New Customers

With the proper marketing techniques come not only recognition and trust, but more customers and clients. As you market your services or products, you will gain brand recognition, which will ultimately lead to more people wanting your products and services. If you are unsure that you are getting more customers from your marketing campaign, put in place a way to track it. This can be as simple as asking new customers how they heard about your company or your products.



Build Relationships

Once you get the ball rolling on recognition and trust and you start getting new clients, it is important to continue marketing. But now, you'll also want to target your existing customers. This is where you can really build your business. If you maintain solid relationships with your clients, they'll keep coming back as well as recommend to their friends and family that they use your services. By applying good marketing techniques to your current clients and customers, you will make them feel like insiders and make them feel that they are special and valued in some way.
There are many ways to build relationships through marketing. One good example is to ask clients for their opinions. Ask them what you could do to improve your services or products. By asking them questions you are making them feel more involved in your business and you have a platform for a continued relationship.



Have you been challenged to prove your marketing worth? How did you respond? Let’s get a dialogue going about how we can make marketing believers out of skeptical stakeholders!

-Andrea Lamarsaude