Therefore, more and more companies will be embracing social media as a viable tool in the arsenal. Not only is it a financially sound alternative to traditional methods in these tough economic times, but marketers today better understand the medium and will improve how they use social media to engage – not just reach – target audiences. This means more spend on multichannel social media campaigns instead of just buying banners on community sites. Also of key importance to this trend is that social media types, tools, metrics and benchmarks are still very much under development. This means that many new measureable ways to apply social media are yet to unfold.

What does this all mean?  Unlike many forecasts, budgets will shift away from traditional media toward interactive.  In a word, advertising budgets will decline but marketing investments wont.  With dollars moving out of traditional media towards less expensive and more efficient tools, marketers will actually need less money to accomplish their current advertising goals.

The event, entitled “Marketing for a Brave New World: Fundamentals of Demand Generation and Marketing Automation,” will feature RPM Demand president and CEO Lisa Desouza, an industry expert and thought leader in next generation marketing strategies. It is scheduled for Saturday, March 24, 2012 from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the CSU Channel Islands Thousand Oaks Campus, 501 Marin St., Ste. 200, Thousand Oaks, CA. The cost is free to current CSU Channel Islands students and $25 to all others.

The seminar will reveal keys to creating a holistic demand generation strategy and implementing and running a comprehensive marketing automation system. This is a must-attend for business, marketing and communication majors, MBA students, recruitment or development specialists, marketing professionals, sales professionals, organization leaders, business owners, and anyone on a marketing career path.

“Generating leads for sales or recruitment is a marketer’s top priority,” said deSouza. “Today’s high tech marketing tools like social media and website optimization can be very effective marketing tools, yet are confusing and overwhelming to many marketers. RPM Demand is expert at helping marketers create and implement a strategy to leverage next-generation demand generation and marketing automation tools so they can corral, channel and convert them into critical multipliers.”

Registration Information

For more information and to register for the RPM Demand/CSU Channel Islands “Marketing For A Brave New World” seminar, visit http://ext.csuci.edu/degree-programs/upcoming-events.htm or call 805-437-2748. The deadline for registering is March 20, 2012.

About Lisa deSouza

Lisa deSouza is a creative executive and digital media producer who has made a career pushing the boundaries of interactive marketing. A results-oriented leader in new media and online marketing industries, she has over 15 years of increasing responsibilities in a broad range of marketing and new product packaging, programs, event planning and service development, as well as e-commerce merchandising and web site technologies. Lisa has a proven track record managing both people and clients and a demonstrated ability to coordinate projects and tasks across multiple functional areas. Over her career she has consulted for Global 5000 companies like Tommy Hilfiger, L’Oreal, SAP, EA Sports and Direct TV. deSouza is a rising industry expert and thought leader in demand generation and marketing automation strategies and tactics and has contracted for many of the largest agencies in the country servicing Global 5000 clients all over the world. As well as establishing her own digital demand generation and marketing automation company, which is the only practice of its kind in Southern California and the only woman-owned one in the country, she is also the founder of an online Marketing Automation University, an online institute that teaches marketers and small business owners the fundamentals of demand generation and Web 2.0 strategies.

deSouza is a member of the Business Advisory Council for the Martin V. School of Business at CSU Channel Islands. deSouza holds an undergraduate degree in Economics and Political Science from Columbia University.

About RPM Demand

RPM Demand is a demand generation consulting firm headquartered in Los Angeles, CA with satellite offices in New York and Chicago. RPM Demand is the only digital demand generation and marketing automation practice in the Southern California region and the only one in the country that is woman and minority-owned. RPM’s core services revolve around strategy, sales and marketing alignment, process management, buyer architecture, marketing automation implementation and on-going management, and revenue performance management.  In addition, the company offers white-label marketing services to the small and mid-sized business space.  The methodology and delivery utilized by the expert team at RPM results in holistic programs that deliver metrics that always move their clients’ businesses.  In other words, marketing solutions today for tomorrow’s challenges! Visit rpmdemand.com for more information.

About California State University Channel Islands

CSU Channel Islands (CI) is the only four-year, public university in Ventura County and is known for its interdisciplinary, multicultural and international perspectives, and its emphasis on experiential and service learning.  CI’s strong academic programs focus on business, sciences, liberal studies, teaching credentials, and innovative master’s degrees.  Students benefit from individual attention, up-to-date technology, and classroom instruction augmented by outstanding faculty research.

Media Contact for FBSG:
Chloe Larnach
818-227-5130
chloe.larnach@fayebsg.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

RPM DEMAND AND FAYE BUSINESS SYSTEMS GROUP ANNOUNCE NEW MARKETING SERVICES PARTNERSHIP

Combined RPM demand generation services and FBSG business optimization software deliver greater efficiency and sales effectiveness; drive greater revenue and lower cost per sale

STUDIO CITY, Calif. and WOODLAND HILLS, Calif. – March 5, 2012 – RPM Demand and Faye Business Systems Group, Inc. (FBSG) today announced a synergistic partnership in which RPM Demand will integrate FBSG’s business optimization services using SugarCRM, Sage MAS 90 and MAS 200, Intacct, and custom software application products into its demand generation offerings and FBSG will add RPM Demand’s demand generation and marketing automation services to their suite of services. This benefits clients of both companies, who will benefit from enhanced efficiency and sales effectiveness that result in greater revenue at a lower cost per sale.

RPM enhances company growth through demand generation consulting services that drive brand/business strategies, sales and marketing alignment, process management, buyer architecture, marketing automation implementation/ongoing management, and revenue performance management.

“The integration of FBSG’s leading customer relationship management (CRM) products with our innovative marketing automation services closes the gap between marketing and sales,” said Lisa deSouza, RPM Demand president. “Through our automation strategy, marketing efforts deliver more highly qualified leads directly to sales people in a quantifiable fashion. This results in a streamlined sales process that produces greater revenues at a lower cost for our customers.”

FBSG is a technology consulting and software company that helps growing companies become more profitable by working with them to optimize their financial and business systems.  Primarily by helping clients assess, implement, and optimize the right software for the right task, FBSG uses key software like SugarCRM, Sage MAS 90 and MAS 200, Intacct, and a variety of custom software solutions. Services include project management, software implementations, consulting, programming, training, and support.

“We couldn’t be more excited about bringing RPM’s demand generation services to our clients,” said David Faye, FBSG CEO.  “RPM’s expertise, combined with our ability to develop creative software solutions should be a win/win for everyone.”

About RPM Demand

RPM Demand is a demand generation consulting firm headquartered in Los Angeles, CA with satellite offices in New York and Chicago. RPM Demand is the only digital demand generation and marketing automation practice in the Southern California region and the only one in the country that is woman- and minority-owned. RPM’s core services revolve around strategy, sales and marketing alignment, process management, buyer architecture, marketing automation implementation and on-going management, and revenue performance management.  In addition, the company offers white-label marketing services to the small and mid-sized business space.  The methodology and delivery utilized by the expert team at RPM results in holistic programs that result in metrics that always move their client’s businesses.  In other words, marketing solutions today for tomorrow’s challenges! Visit rpmdemand.com for more information.

About Faye Business Systems Group

Faye Business Systems Group is a Southern California-based technology consulting firm and software company with over 25 years of experience in helping growing companies get “over the wall” and optimize their financial and business systems to become more profitable. FBSG uses SugarCRM, Intacct, Sage MAS 90 and MAS 200, and a variety of custom software solutions to meet client needs. Services include software development, project management, packaged software implementations, custom software implementations, integration, consulting, training, and support. For more information, call (818) 227-5130, email info@fayebsg.com, or visit http://www.fayebsg.com.

For too many years marketing was seen as the one organization that got a “free pass” because they could never seemingly quantify in dollars and cents their direct impact.  However in the current economic climate, more and more marketing executives are finding out the hard way that there is no “get out of jail” free card anymore.  The marketing executive who cannot precisely report on metrics and point to direct ROI is one that will be out of a job very quickly.

A robust CRM system and/or a Marketing Automation platform should be every CMO’s new best friend. By leveraging these applications Marketing now has direct visibility into the entire revenue cycle allowing the organization to point to success based on hard numbers and not just on impressions or awareness.  Think about this for a moment.  Imagine your company is attending a trade show and as such you decide to support their presence with an extensive multi-tiered email campaign.  With a Marketing Automation system you are able to track with precision who clicked on, opened, acted on your emails and went to the offer landing page. Each one of those potential clients can then be cookied and scored based on recurring interactions such as web page visits, downloading whitepapers, and attending webinars to name a few .  Now imagine that you can generate such a detailed report not only for each campaign but also create custom reports that track an individual sales directors accounts, or reports that show a spike in web traffic that is in conjunction with a current marketing initiative.  The possibilities are endless.

Executions of such campaigns are only capable when companies make the commitment to invest and implement technology for marketing and sales. Solutions like these not only help get the right message out to the right prospects at the right time, but effectively scores the leads that are generated.  This, in turn, directly impacts the level of effort the sales team dedicates to prospect follow-up and helps keep those companies that are the most interested in buying at the top of their list.  And you’d better believe that directly impacts the bottom line.

One final word of caution. The results generated by such an increase in efficiency and the resulting alignment between Sales and Marketing can be staggering.  Please make sure your boss is safely seated in his/her chair before you present them with any of these metrics.

Studio City, CA – February 1, 2012 ‐ Radix Promotions and Marketing {RPM}, a boutique sales and marketing consulting firm with offices in Los Angeles, New York and Chicago is pleased to announce the acquisition of Thomas Watson Consulting (TWC), a Los Angeles based Web 2.0 agency focusing on web design, marketing communications, advertising, collateral, direct marketing, and PR.

“I am thrilled to announce this news to the industry,” stated RPM President & CEO, Lisa deSouza. “This has been a long time coming. I have been partnering with Tom Watson for several months now and he has been instrumental member of the team on many key client engagements.”

“This seemed like the natural evolution of my business,” added TWC founder and principal, Tom Watson. “Lisa is doing some real cutting-­‐edge work in Southern California by bringing marketing automation and demand generation services to the region. I have been pleased to see the direction that RPM has been taking and I realized that this was something I really want to be a part of.”

Tom Watson will officially helm the RPM’s services organization as the Chief Services Officer and will also be responsible for customer experience. In addition to Ms. deSouza, Mr. Watson will help shape the strategy and direction of the firm as they focus on their two key service offerings…white –label marketing for small and mid-­‐sized businesses, plus marketing automation related services: strategy, planning, implementation, campaign creation, optimization, and the occasional “recovery” for a software partner.

“Now that Tom is in-­‐house I get excited just thinking about the possibilities,” added Ms. deSouza. “ We are growing rapidly in an extremely challenging economy, have a clear direction and focus, are establishing ourselves as real players in the mid-­‐market space and are the only such firm we know of offering these kinds of services in the Southern California region. 2012 is going to be a great year for RPM!”

About {RPM}

RPM is a Demand Generation Consulting firm headquartered in Los Angeles, CA with satellite offices in New York and Chicago. RPM’s core services revolve around strategy, sales and marketing alignment, process management, buyer architecture, marketing automation implementation and on-­‐going management, and revenue performance management. In addition, the company offers white-­‐label marketing services to the small and mid-­‐sized business space. The methodology and delivery utilized by the expert team at RPM results in holistic programs which result in metrics that always move their client’s businesses. In other words, marketing solutions today for tomorrow’s challenges!

About Thomas Watson Consulting

Thomas Watson Consulting (TWC) is headquartered in Burbank, CA. TWC provides a range of marketing and marketing technology services and solutions designed to improve marketing and business results. Services include strategy, research, process analysis, demand generation strategies, web 2.0 communications, ECommerce, plus marketing automation and CRM technologies.

It was an electrifying year, not only for RPM but for the industry at large! And so, during the last two weeks I found myself reaching out to colleagues, friends, and even competitors to discuss the seemingly common trends for 2011. The one thing I heard repeatedly was that 2011 was the year of “reactive”.  That is, we all know these past few years have been extremely challenging…both on an organizational and personal level. And as such, this has left many of us scrambling to do as much as possible with what little we have.  As a result, what we found was that every move was in fact a direct or indirect reaction to something else.  The result? We were always left scrambling, putting out fires, and delivering by the skin of our teeth.

But as the title of the book written by S.E.  Hinton so clearly states, “That was Then…This is Now”.
We’ve learned our lessons…mostly that we cannot keep on doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results.  After all, that is the definition of insanity. We’ve tended to our battle scars, circled the wagons and after the dust has settled, we spent most of December figuring out a new plan of attack for the New Year. But in order to do this we must understand first where we have been before we can successfully move forward.

The leadership team at RPM hunkered down during the month of December and when we emerged we found we had two key mandates.

The first is that 2012 is the year of strategy.  That is, from here on out, we are going to focus on our core competencies.

Don’t get me wrong.  We’re not complaining. After all, last year we experienced the biggest jump in revenue in the company’s history.  And since we found ourselves in the unique position of turning clients away, we also found ourselves in the not so unique position of scrambling to deliver.  Too often we found ourselves building websites, creating email templates, running PPC campaigns, setting up social media accounts, optimizing landing pages, etc.  But that is not what truly sets us apart from the rest of the playing field. Therefore, it was not surprising to hear when we polled clients and prospects, most thought we were just another full-service digital marketing agency. And so, we were challenged with redefining our image in the marketplace.  To do this we went back to what we know best.

Effective 2012 RPM will be known as the only Digital Demand Generation Consulting Firm in Southern California.  Our two key service offerings are as follows:
1) Demand generation consulting – Strategy, business process review, sales and marketing alignment, marketing automation implementation and management, and training.
2) Outsourced Marketing – “White label” marketing for those corporations who were interested in adding a marketing department without the burdensome cost of extra headcount.

The second initiative is to make 2012 the year of partnerships.

We have learned (mostly by trial and error) that we cannot be everything to everyone. While we specialize and build our brand to reflect this specialization in demand generation and marketing automation, we also realize that many of our clients and prospects still require the tools…software, graphics, collateral, videos, etc.) to implement such a robust program. And so this year we are committed to expanding our partner basis even farther.  While we already were partnered with such respected marketing automation platforms as Eloqua, Pardot, Net-Results, Loopfuse, and MindMatrix.  This year we are partnering with existing digital marketing/advertising agencies, management consulting companies, and video production houses.  We understand that together we are stronger and that there is enough revenue for all of us in which to partake.  We are committed to being a great partner to our clients by offering them the right solution to fit their needs and a strategic ally to all our existing (and future) partners.

On a personal note, I have made it my mission to take over the task of writing the blog.  I expect that the tone and nature of the content will change and although I intend to discuss industry standards and best practices, I also want this to serve as an honest, yet reflective journey over the course of this year. The very essence of marketing is evolving and it seems only fitting that we, as an organization, are evolving as well. This is a very exciting time to be a marketer and an even more exciting time for RPM.  We have a clear vision, our company is growing rapidly (we just hired two more team members this month) and from where I am standing, the sky’s the limit. Thanks to those who supported us as customers, partners and the team who helped (and continues to help) build this company.
I can’t wait to see what the next 11 months bring!

A marketing plan doesn’t have to be long and drawn out.  It will probably take a day or so to flush out the key components.  But once you have a plan try as much as possible to stick to it and modify as you start receiving metrics that show its success…or failure. There are five basic steps that all organizations and marketers must take in order to create a marketing plan that works.

Step 1 - Map all actions against your buying process.  This means that it is very important to know who your target customer is.  Where are they located?  What are the similar attributes between each? How do they select vendors? Do they buy at a certain time of year?  What do budgets look like?

Finding out as much information as possible about your current customers as it will help you understand not only who your future customers may be but also how to potentially upsell your current customers.  After all, your best prospects are your current customers. Once you have a profile you know how to target your messaging as well as the timing.  Without this information you might as well be fishing in the dark with grenades.

Step 2 – Know what you are good at.  I know this sounds rudimentary but you will be surprised how simple, yet difficult a task this can be. In these challenging times, many companies have attempted (and I stress the word attempted) to cast a wider net by offering more products and services. Unfortunately, the result often is a diluted offering.  The New Year is a great opportunity to take a candid look at what your business strengths and weaknesses are.  You might have the best customer service, you might have the most comfortable waiting room, you might even have the most relaxing music playing…no detail is too small or trivial. The goal of the exercise is to help you focus on your core competencies and then maximize them.

Keep in mind that they best way to truly accomplish this is to do some simple market research. Survey your existing customers.  Ask them what they truly know about your products and services or your company.  In your survey, list what you think are your strengths and weaknesses and ask them to rank them on a scale from 1-5.  Results from this kind of candid feedback is always surprising and will inform you how you might change your business and your messaging.

Step 3 - Know your 4 P’s.  Now that you understand your customer and the way your company is perceived, you can clearly establish a Product, Price, Place and Promotion.  The first two are pretty self-explanatory.  Product includes everything from how you will name your product/company to how you will package it. In layman’s terms, what are you offering your potential (and current) customers?  Price is how much you will charge, the payment or discount terms, and when. Place depends on the type of business (ie. brick and mortar vs. virtual) that you are.  Depending on your which bucket you fall into, you need to decide what channels and where you will sell your products.  Finally, Promotion is how you will get the word out, ie. your advertising and communication strategy.  However, never forget that the decisions you make for each one is always in the context of how it relates to the target customer.

Step 4 - Getting the Word Out.  First and foremost you have to nail your messaging. You’ll have to use your 4 P’s to really get your messaging right. You might even have to use more than one target audience (ie. segment your install base) and a different message for each. And make sure that you focus on how your product or service will help your target customer. This is perhaps the most important piece of the puzzle.  After all, if your messaging does not address a need or pain point, nobody cares…sorry to be that blunt.  People are emotional creatures and they buy because they want to know how your product or service will first benefit them first; features are secondary.

So when you write your copy and you list a feature, always pay off the feature with what goes after “….so now you can…” or “…for better…” in your copy. If there is no benefit to your target customer then maybe it is time to rethink its value

Once you have nailed your messaging it is time to spread the word about your business and get new prospects in the door.  This is where most companies loose there way.  Why?  Well the good news is there is a wealth of cheap and easy tools you can use.  The bad news?  There is a wealth of cheap and easy tools you can use.  In other words too often companies get distracted by all the “shiny objects” and act like a kid with ADD.  Pick a few quick and easy wins.  First figure out if you are going to employ an inbound or outbound tactic.  If you decide, for example to go with an inbound strategy, then decide what inbound tool you will use. If you are going to use social media figure out what exactly you are going to leverage and COMMIT to it 110% If you decide to write a blog, then make sure that you are consistently adding content and are responding to comments.

Step 5 – Analyze, analyze, analyze.  You’ve heard of Strunk and White’s famous opening line to all writers, “Simplify, simplify, simplify.”  Well this should be the famous opening line to all marketers. Now that you’ve got all of your ABCs and 4 P’s down, you’ll continually need to measure what is working and what you’ll need to refine or ditch. Not everything will work but don’t just try it out once and then shelve it.  Keep trying different things to make it work.

Your marketing plan should be your stake in the ground to get started doing some really creative and exciting things to bring prospects to the door, convert them to customers, and keep them coming back.  But things can change fast in today’s world. So revisit your plan at least twice a year to ensure that you’re still on the right rack with what will make you a success!

As more scrutiny is placed on the bottom line, many companies demand to know more about the expected and realized Return On Investment (ROI) for any marketing plan. Investment in and measurement of the success of any program always comes back to “what’s the return.”

While the value of brand awareness and recognition is a very important piece to any marketing plan, it is often very difficult to calculate in terms of conversion to sales. Still, there are techniques you can use to validate your marketing plan before you implement it and these same techniques can also be used to measure it during and after execution.

To calculate a marketing plan’s expected ROI, you need to compile the following information in a ROI Calculator:

Marketing Vehicle Used. Take every marketing vehicle and enter it into your ROI calculator even if the vehicle has no cost. Be sure to include ALL marketing expenses, including labor (staff and outside services), brand awareness activities (public relations, advertising, speaking engagements), marketing communications (print and web), and direct marketing activities (direct mail, email, search ads).

Number of Impressions Made. For each marketing vehicle, enter the number of impressions your vehicle will make each month. (i.e. How many mailers are going out? How many attendees are coming to the show? How many readers will read the publication? How many guests will attend the seminar? And so on.) If you can’t quantify the expected impressions for a vehicle (some vehicles are in support of the overall program, but can’t be easily quantified), use “0″ as the number impressions and include its cost in the ROI equation.

Expected Response Rate. For guidance on industry response rates, consider purchasing The DMA’s Annual Response Rate Study. Otherwise, I recommend you use your past metrics. If you do not have a benchmark (and many of you don’t) you will need to make a conservative estimate based on your best guess or hire a consultant to guide you.

Annual Cost. For each vehicle you will need to calculate the annual cost to implement.

Average Lead to Proposal Ratio and Average Close Rate. To truly calculate ROI from the above information, you will need to know (or be able to estimate) your lead to proposal ratio (and establish you cost per acquisition which I speak to later in this blog). That is the percentage of leads that become proposals on average. Additionally, you will want to know your company’s average close rate. That is an average percentage of proposals, bids, or cost estimates that you win.

Average Annual Customer Value (Sales). Finally, you will need to know (or be able to estimate) the average annual customer value in terms of the average sales per customer per year.

From the above you should now be able to ESTIMATE how many leads your program should generate (given messaging, right mix of vehicles, appropriate target market, solid product offering, etc.), how many customers you should convert, and therefore your return on investment. The ROI formula you should use is

NUMBER OF IMPRESSIONS x EXPECTED RESPONSE RATE = LEADS GENERATED PER YEAR x LEAD-TO-PROPOSAL % = NUMBER OF PROPOSALS x CLOSE RATE = NUMBER OF CUSTOMERS x ANNUAL CUSTOMER VALUE = REVENUE – TOTAL MARKETING EXPENSE = ROI.

So what are your lead generation benchmarks for success? Determining the right promotional mix for your company requires careful consideration of many angles—including,

but not limited to, your target market, market maturity, and brand identity. Below are metrics from the top four vehicles your fellow marketers are using:

• Direct Mail. A staple in any marketing plan (75% of marketing plans include direct mail), direct mail comes in many shapes and sizes. The biggest battle with direct mail is breaking through the noise and getting “opened.” To be sure your direct mail is opened, consider designing it as personal correspondence—invitation/greeting card sized envelope, hand addressed, and hand stamped. Lead Generation Metrics: Flat=.03%- 2.56%, Dimensional=.5%-4.25%

• Email. A close second to direct mail, and considerably cheaper, email is used by at least 60% of marketers. In fact, the flood of email being sent, even permission-based email, creates its own challenges for using this vehicle. Value added content continues to win in this arena! Lead Generation Metrics: 30%-40% open, .10%- 1.73% click through.

• Telemarketing. Specifically for B2B markets, telemarketing (not to be confused with telesales) is a critical component (34% of you use it in your promotional mix) to cost effective lead generation, not to mention lead qualification. Lead Generation Metrics: 20%-40% connect rates, 5%-25% qualifies or leads generated.

• Online Advertising. Finally, 33% of marketers use some form of online advertising (search engine advertising, banner advertising, and email sponsorships) to promote their products and services. Lead Generation Metrics: SEM=3-5% click through, 10-15% conversion; BANNERS=.20-1.11% click through, 6-25% conversion; EMAIL SPONSORSHIP=.10-.27% click through, 8-24% conversion.

Remember, no one vehicle will do the job (VARIETY), you must implement over time

(FREQUENCY), and your message cannot change from vehicle to vehicle (CONSISTENCY). These benchmarks are just guidelines for you to use in designing your lead generation blueprint and projecting its ROI.

The final piece in the ROI formula (and something I already touched upon briefly) is the cost per customer acquisition.  As sales and marketing teams develop and implement marketing budgets, they rely on many metrics to guide them. What was spent last year? What does the industry typically spend as a percentage of revenue? How much is needed to implement the planned activities? And so on. However, what is often not asked is perhaps the most critical metric of all. How much can you afford to spend to acquire a new customer?

The path to answering this question boils down to knowing your Lifetime Customer Value. The Lifetime Value (LTV) of a Customer is built from the following equation:

LTV = (Frequency of Purchase) X (Duration of Loyalty) X (Gross Profit)

Take the average for each of these three questions and plug that into the LTV equation, and you have your Lifetime Gross Profit contribution of a customer.

A good rule of thumb to follow when answering this question is 1/3 of the LTV can be spent to acquire a new customer. This assumes you have a retention rate within normal ranges—most companies experience 20-25% attrition each year. If your customer attrition rate is much higher than 25%, you may have a brand loyalty problem that should be addressed immediately. Remember, it costs 5x more to acquire a new customer than it does to retain an existing one. Also, if 1/3 of your LTV is less than 10% as a percentage of sales, you may have an overhead expense problem that needs to be addressed.

Calculating your Customer LifeTime Value will not only help you determine what you can afford to spend on sales and marketing, but it also will help you identify other issues you may need to address outside of the budgeting process (e.g. attrition and overly burdensome overhead costs).

Only when you get your arms around all the costs can you finally put into place a thorough plan with quantifiable metrics. In every budget negotiation, talks always come back to one thing—what’s the Return? Though it is often very difficult to calculate in terms of conversion to sales, the techniques and benchmarks outlined above can help validate your marketing plan both during and after execution.

Ah, September.  The beginning of fall, football, and that wonderful crisp chill in the morning air.  It is also the time of the year when companies realize that they only have three more months (two if you count the fact that most people “check out” after Thanksgiving) to make their numbers.  And so, there is another feeling that starts creeping into the air…PANIC.   And that is when everyone starts turning to marketers and marketing departments to reach into their hat and pull out a rabbit. Unfortunately the result of such lofty expectations is always bitter disappointment.  What can be done?

1. Set expectations from the start. This is of utmost importance in order to maximize success…or at least minimize losses. Before beginning any engagement clearly define your goals, deliverables and establish a thorough marketing plan.  However, as the saying goes, “the best laid plans of mice and men.”  As the days draw down, it will become more and more vital to give consistent status reports.  Remember to always echo your original message and most importantly stick to your guns.
2. Rack up a series of small wins.  Remember that you are going to be under a microscope until the New Year.  And the only way to prove your success is to set up a series of easy deliverables that can be easily accomplished.  Some companies need to see a list with items scratched off. Make sure that as you establish your calendar and look towards long term goals initiatives you sprinkle in a few items that can be easily knocked off.  This gives the illusion of success even if it is just smoke and mirrors.
3. Build lean teams with multifaceted skill sets. Recruit and hire individuals with skill sets that cover a broad range of experience, rather than a small niche of expertise. Individuals who have the know-how (and initiative) to jump in and help out in a variety of roles within the marketing department will serve you well when resources are in short supply—either due to cutbacks or a hot economy.
4. Make sales your best friend. Nothing is more powerful than an aligned sales and marketing team.  Defining what qualifies an opportunity as a “lead” is a great start to successful prospecting. Now you must also define the role of sales and marketing in the converting of prospects to leads. This is where many companies fall down—by either assigning this responsibility to marketing alone or assigning it fully to sales. In reality though, the most effective approach is assigning the responsibility to both and integrating the activities of each. This is not a relay race where one runner hands the baton off cleanly to the next. This is more like a baseball game, where catchers, pitchers, basemen, and outfielders all play their part in an integrated way to win the game.

And if all else fails, you can always show up to work in a yellow leotard with a red cape!

It doesn’t have to take four months to develop a comprehensive plan. In fact, a focused team can accomplish it in three to six weeks; and the time invested upfront no doubt will pay off through the implementation and launch of future campaigns.

Though you may have heard it all before, it is always valuable to review the elements
the team should consider in developing your strategic marketing plan:

• Your Goals and Objectives
• The Role of Marketing in Your Organization
• The Market Analysis
• Your Company Identity
• Your Products and Services
• Your Target Market(s)
• Your Competition
• Your Sales Model
• Your Marketing Mix

Only after you’ve researched, developed, and digested this essential information ready to begin implementing a marketing campaign—that is if you are intent on acquiring good sales leads and building solid brand equity. Spending this important time upfront to put together a powerful plan will pay off in the long run—unlike the quick–and–dirty alternative.