My love-hate relationship with marketing
I’m an accountant, so I am not supposed to love marketing, am I?
When I started in industry, marketing budget were cut, how can you justify the ROI on that spend. So much time was spent understanding the return on money spent, some easier than others to explain.
However, when cash needed to be saved it was the easiest spot. It didn’t impact the bottom line, that you can really measure easy compared with other costs.
Then I started my own business, and everything change. Marketing costs started getting put into different buckets;
• Brand – brand awareness. Wanting people to know the Whiteark brand, without awareness people will not think Whiteark when they have a problem. So, with a new business this required a bit of planning, spending and time to get right.
• Events – client events, potential client events & dinner to entertain people was important to build deeper relationships with the right network.
• Content – With the brand in play, having relevant content across social media so potential clients would spot us, understand our value proposition and when a problem came up they would think call Whiteark. Regular content and varied content that was unique was important.
• Podcast – like everyone in the 2020 year with COVID we started a Podcast, it was based on interviewing a leader to understand what made them tick and their leadership journey. It was a great podcast, we did 52 in 52 weeks and then we stopped but we loved the interviews and we got some regular listeners.
• Listings – consulting listings, female network listings and other listings to ensure that we would come up if people were looking
• Website – constant updates to website to ensure new and interesting information
• Brochures – regular brochures that are hard copy and soft copy about our service
• Email campaigns – through Linkedin and/or through Mailchimp through regular newsletters.
• And other things that I now consider marketing…..
It’s hard to measure the success of the marketing stuff listed about but then you speak with a potential client, bump into someone that wants to partner on something or someone reaches out on Linkedin off the back of your postings or seeing some new content.
But whatever the case brand and marketing is important. It’s sometimes hard to measure, but there is ROI. You just need to find the right balance between spend and ROI.
Companies these days, larger companies can measure ROI on marketing campaigns more successfully than they have been able to in the past, which helps them invest in retention, but the cost of acquisition is always a challenge, for most businesses.
When you own a consulting business, the marketing play is a long play, not a short play and therefore you need to be comfortable with what you invest and the return you will make in the short term, and the long term.
So, I am a frustrated marketer and like to see the difference that certain campaigns have on statistics at month end and understand how to make them improve month-on-month. Measuring the key engagement stats every month also helps to understand what people that are engaging with the business enjoy.
If you are looking for a marketing expert, you’ve come to the wrong place LOL, however if you are looking for a frustrated marketer that has learnt to love marketing and all things associated with it, as I founder my business, you’ve come to the right place.
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I hope you like this article, I had fun writing it. 🌞
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