January 2010 Newsletter
It's a new year (finally!) with challenging new goals both personally
and professionally. But, how do you know when you're on the right
track? This month's newsletter focuses on ways to evaluate your
performance, marketing programs and presentations and achieve ongoing
improvement.
How to Measure Your
Marketing Programs to Improve Results
Most of my marketing strategy clients
have one ultimate goal: to increase sales. Still, sales growth isn't
the only important measurement. Here are four other areas to evaluate
to measure your marketing success:
-
Lead
Quality. It's tempting to focus on the quantity of leads while
ignoring their quality. But one quality lead could be worth the cost of
your entire marketing program where other campaigns that yield high
numbers may not produce any sales at all.
-
Relationship
Building. Did you generate good will or otherwise improve your
relationships with customers and prospects?
-
Brand
Building. Were you consistent with your existing brand and did
your efforts strengthen your value proposition in the market place?
-
Marketing
Insight. Did you learn anything new about the markets you serve?
Can you create new offerings or jettison old services that don't suit
your market or your brand any longer?
While you can't always quantify
branding, client relationships and market insights, they always go hand
in hand with a good marketing campaign and ultimately (you guessed it)
increase sales.
Put
Power in Your Presentations by Measuring the Four R's
Unless you give presentations for a
living, it can be difficult to evaluate your performance when you speak
to a group. Even the ubiquitous 1-10 rating scales at meetings are more
likely to describe how people felt about the room temperature than your
speech content and delivery.
Use my Four R's to evaluate your
presentations (both formal and informal) and learn how to take your
performance to the next level:
-
Results.
What did your presentation accomplish and did you achieve your
objectives (to persuade, inform, inspire, entertain, etc.)?
-
Rapport.
Did your audience like you and trust you? Rapport and audience
connection are the number one predictors of your presentation's
effectiveness.
-
Repeatability.
Can the audience repeat your
important points verbatim? Sound bites that your audience can remember
and repeat make your impact last.
-
Reactions.
What are the reactions of the
people you trust? (Beware of trying to interpret body language and
facial expressions as they are often misleading.)
Review your recording of your
presentation to evaluate yourself and pay special attention to how your
performance improves over time. If you can regularly improve on just
one of the Four R's, you'll put more power in your presentations and
keep audience hanging on your every word.
Getting
Goals Right: How to Process Your Progress
-
Choose
the Right Time. Evaluate your progress as soon as possible. For
an event, evaluate immediately after your finish. For a long-term
project, evaluate progress intermittently.
-
Choose
the Right Attitude. Use your evaluation process as a learning
tool, not as a blame or punishment exercise. Focus on how you can move
forward to achieve better results.
-
Identify
Outcomes. What were all the end results of your actions (not
just the ones you were expecting)? Looking broadly at all outcomes
makes it easier to identify successes.
-
Compare
Outcomes with Your Objectives. Did you meet your goals? Do this
step after identifying outcomes, or you might miss unexpected successes
unrelated to your original goal.
-
Identify
Key Lessons. What did you learn from your experience? Be sure
to include both new information you learned as well as beliefs that you
confirmed or disproved.
-
Adjust
Your Course. Make plans to move forward based on what you've
learned. Set new measures of success. Be flexible if your plans have
changed.
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