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O P I N I O N
Z weig Group’s 2016 Marketing Survey found that 27 percent of A/E/P and environmental firms did not create a formal marketing plan. You can’t improve what you don’t measure. Marketing metrics There’s a critical set of benchmarks you need to measure so you’ll know what works, what doesn’t, and how to be more effective.
2)New/repeat client ratio. Only 75 percent of firms track this. You have to know if you are retaining cli- ents. It’s also important to know if a large volume of your work is dependent on one or two main clients – that’s a dangerous position to be in. Set goals to keep repeat clients as well as develop new business. For the average firm in this industry about one- quarter of all work comes from new clients and the rest from repeat clients. 3)Proposal hit rate. You have to know how many pro- posals your firm is sending out both in dollar value “Are you consistently meeting your goals or falling short? If you don’t like the answer to this question, maybe you need to adjust your goals or re- evaluate your marketing techniques or spending.”
Make your marketing count. Here are seven marketing metrics you need to be tracking. 1)Revenue/sales goals. While not exactly a measure of your firm’s marketing success, revenue or sales goals should be the cornerstone of your firm’s mar- keting plan and strategy. Are you consistently meet- ing your goals or falling short? If you don’t like the answer to this question, maybe you need to adjust your goals or re-evaluate your marketing techniques or spending. Zweig Group’s 2017 Marketing Survey found that only 49 percent of respondents had rev- enue/sales goals as a part of their firm’s marketing plan. Related to this is measuring the actual dollar volume of work sold. Only 71 percent of all firms track this metric and only 33 percent share this in- formation with marketing staff. These goals should be directly correlated with the firm’s marketing budget. It seems like a no-brainer, but only 45 percent of firms prepare an annual mar- keting budget. Not only does your firm need to do this, but someone needs to hold your firm account- able to sticking to it. On average, a marketing budget is 5 percent of net revenue.
Christina Zweig Niehues
See CHRISTINA ZWEIG NIEHUES, page 4
THE ZWEIG LETTER May 1, 2017, ISSUE 1198
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