Setting big, lofty goals are great – as long as you build a roadmap to get there. This is one reason we’ve never been big fans of New Year’s Resolutions – the beginning of a new year is as fine a time as any to look forward and plan a strategy, but unless you spend as much time on the HOW as the WHAT, it’s not worth the effort.
Our advice is the same no matter the time of the year: look at the data and make a plan from there.
Look at Last Year’s Marketing Metrics
First, tally up every penny you spent on marketing – networking dues, advertisements, flyer printing, sponsorships, marketing agency retainers, marketing team salary etc. It should be a line item in your books.
If you want to get an even more accurate number, look at everyone on your team that has some marketing tasks but is not in a full-fledged marketing role – estimate their hours per month spent (ie proofreading marketing material, going to networking events, grabbing coffee with potential referral sources, etc.) on marketing and multiply that by their hourly rate.
This all adds up to your total marketing cost for the year.
Next, tally up how many leads you got last year. Divide your marketing cost by your number of leads, and you have your cost-per-lead.
Then divide your marketing cost by the number of clients you added last year – now you have your cost-per-client.
These two metrics should govern your entire marketing campaign – every action you take should be bringing these numbers down (the lower your cost-per-client, the higher your profit margins).
Look at What Is Achievable Through Marketing
Now, once you have those data points, look at what you can do. What actions can you take to bring down that cost-per-lead? The reality is simple: you can either:
- lower your costs
- grow your leads, or
- all of the above
If your goal is to grow revenue by, say, 40%, look at what that would take. Say your revenue was $5,000,000 in 2022. To grow by 40%, that means the goal would be to hit $7,000,000 in revenue in 2023. If you had 450 clients and assume you’ll make the same revenue per client this year, you would need to add 180 clients to your annual tally. The first place to look is to see what you can do to boost your conversion rate (ie keep the same number of leads but convert more of them). Next, look for where you could reallocate your budget.
If sponsoring that charity golf tournament doesn’t do anything for the bottom line, drop it. But if getting a booth at a trade show worked well, look at using the money you saved from not sponsoring the golf tournament on get a more prominent booth this year.
Want to get into the details? We’re here to help. Drop us a line and we’re more than happy to set up a free consultation.