Statements like “At least we gained some name recognition”  is NOT a measurement and should not be acceptable. You can't pay your bills with name recognition! It's best to think of Marketing and Sales as a science. In Science you start with a theory (Plan) you test the theory (Implement), record data,  measure the results (Measure) and draw conclusions (Analysis).

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” - Albert Einstein

Website Measurement 

 Key metrics to review in your plan are:

• Number of total visitors (Is it growing each month?)
• Number of new visitors (This is good if your website goal is to gain new customers)
• Number of return visitors (This stat depends on your website goal)
• Bounce Rate (Measure your movement of this stat downward – 100% is not a good grade)
• Time on site (Of course the longer the better)
• Number of pages reviewed (The more the better)
• Entrance sources ( How did they find your site – you want a lot of referral sources here like Search engines, partners, vendors etc. )
• Exit pages (Where did they leave your site – should they have left there what changes need to be made)

If your visitors are low according to the benchmarks, and you show few search engine referrals, you might need to do a website optimization to increase traffic. See that section below.  If none of your visitors is converting to leads or sales, you need to look at the placement of your conversion goals and lead generation systems.  For example – if you have a “Contact Us” form that asks for a lot of information – you may need to provide a value add free source (such as this workbook) to intice them to complete the lead form.

Lead Generation and Sales Measurement 

We have prepared a workbook to help our clients work through all the elements of a marketing plan. This workbook will guide you through all the aspects of marketing through best practice ideas and forms.  While it's best to have mymarketplan.com facilitate you through this process, you can try to work through the workbook and draft your own market plan.  Click here to download your free copy. We also offer marketing plans that go much deeper than the playbook, but it has been our experience that the Playbook provides most of what most companies need.          

Integrating the Marketing and Sales processes is a critical component for sustainable growth because your MARKET PLAN determines the your positioning and lays out a path of least resistance to produce enough QUALIFIED leads.  A good plan needs to leverage a number of marketing initiatives that will push leads through a defined sales process that is integrated into your marketing and sales plan. The illustration below demonstrates a typical marketing and sales process.

The SWOT analysis is an extremely useful tool for understanding and decision-making for all sorts of situations in business and organizations. SWOT is an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Use SWOT analysis for business planning, strategic planning, competitor evaluation, marketing, business and product development and research reports. The SWOT analysis can serve as an interpretative filter to reduce the information to a manageable quantity of key issues. The SWOT analysis classifies the internal aspects of the company as strengths or weaknesses and the external situational factors as opportunities or threats. Strengths can serve as a foundation for building a competitive advantage, and weaknesses may hinder it. By understanding these four aspects of its situation, a firm can better leverage its strengths, correct its weaknesses, capitalize on golden opportunities, and deter potentially devastating threats.

Internal Analysis

The internal analysis is a comprehensive evaluation of the internal environment's potential strengths and weaknesses. Factors should be evaluated across the organization in areas such as:

• Company culture
• Company image
• Organizational structure
• Key staff
• Access to natural resources
• Position on the experience curve
  
• Operational efficiency
• Operational capacityBrand awareness
• Market share
• Financial resourcesExclusive contracts
• Patents and trade secrets

External Analysis

An opportunity is the chance to introduce a new product or service that can generate superior returns. Opportunities can arise when changes occur in the external environment. Many of these changes can be perceived as threats to the market position of existing products and may necessitate a change in product specifications or the development of new products in order for the firm to remain competitive. Changes in the external environment may be related to:

• CustomersCompetitors
• Market trends
• Suppliers
• Partners
• Social changes
• New technology
• Economic environment
• Political and regulatory environment

In his book “How to Become a Rainmaker”, Jeffrey Fox wrote “…don’t plan a thirty mile trip with twenty miles worth of gas.”   Meaning that you need to know what your call-to-close ratio is.   If it takes 14 calls to close a deal – DON’T stop at 13!  

A marketing calendar ensures that you have enough gas in your tank and allows you to maximize your miles per gallon.  If a marketing calendar is the gas to your marketing engine – think of your CRM as your gas gauge.  It can tell you exactly how much gas you have left as well as your miles per gallon.

Marketing Plans MUST produce QUALIFIED LEADS

Marketing Plans are a critical component for sustainable growth because they help determine the path of least resistance. A Marketing Plan is the major element of the Business Plan, since it details key issues and specific plans for implementation and control. Therefore a good plan will  have a sound analysis of the marketing environment, good strategies to respond to that environment, and a means of ensuring the plans are executed.  Click on any button below for more details. critical component for sustainable growth because they determine the path of least resistance.  

	Employee buy-in is critical to the development of a sales cultured organization.  Therefore, our SWOT analysis helps to gain involvement from all levels of your organization. The SWOT needs to be an honest assessment of your company where everyone's voice counts.
	A positioning statement is a succinct description of the core target audience to whom your products or services are directed, and a compelling picture of how you want them to view those products and services.  It becomes the guiding principle for the plan.
	Focusing on the right target market saves you time and increases company profits. We review your current customers in order to create a profile for your targeted market database. Your existing data is then combined with additional targets and segmented for a strong sales and marketing database.
	We develop a unique market plan based on your positioning statement and target market. The objective of any plan is to provide sales with lead generation and would typically be highly leveraged to include direct mail & email campaigns, media, PR, workshops, website optimization and customer service, just to name a few.
	A plan without action is worthless.  However, who has the time in your organization to properly implement the plan.  Most well constructed plans take time to implement and analyze. With our marketing system, we are able to manage these marketing functions for you, while integrating seamlessly with sales.
	Statements like “At least we gained some name recognition” should not be acceptable. Marketing is a business; and the purpose of a business is to make money—period! With our packaged CRM system and web analytic tools we have a method to track profits and will provide you with a monthly report

Your company may have a Mission Statement, and maybe a Vision Statement, but do you have a written Marketing Positioning Statement?  A positioning statement is a succinct description of the core target audience to whom our services are directed, and a compelling picture of how we want them to view those services. Sound easy to develop?  It's not!

However, it is worth the effort. Writing a Positioning Statement is a very useful exercise because it requires you to identify, and then articulate in a concise and brief statement your distinct value to your customer in relation to your competitors. Think about how this one sentence could help you improve your elevator pitch, your PowerPoint presentations, sales presentations, and your website home page.A positioning statement should be a sentence that contains the following:

• Target Audience - the attitudinal and demographic description of the core prospect to whom your services are  intended to appeal 
• Frame of Reference - the category in which the service competes
• Benefit/Point of Difference - the most compelling and motivating benefit that your company can own in the hearts and minds of consumers relative to the competition
• Reason to Believe - the proof that the brand delivers what it promises

The main purpose for Marketing is to generate leads. Creating awareness means nothing if no leads are produced. The illustration in to the right demonstrates the five important elements to a good lead generation engine. They are all part of a working machine, so its critical that they work together.