Before committing to a marketing campaign, define the business result you want from it. The amount you intend to spend and the activity you intend to run are not enough to tell you whether the campaign worked.
One of our operators described a conversation with a coffee shop owner on a recorded call with our team.
The owner had been considering spending $5,000 on printed mailers for a grand opening. She wanted to spend less, and they discussed a smaller event budget.
Then the operator asked what success would look like that day.
The owner did not have an answer yet.
What is your marketing budget supposed to accomplish?
The operator said the shop was doing around $500 a day on weekdays and $1,000 a day on weekends. The owner described a daily revenue requirement of roughly $1,350.
Those figures gave the conversation some context. An event needed to do something for a business that was not yet reaching the revenue level the owner said it needed.
They settled on a $2,000 sales target for the grand-opening day.
That was a target, not a reported result. The event had not happened yet.
But now the conversation had a destination. The owner and operator could discuss the work in terms of the sales they wanted it to produce.
Activity alone does not answer the owner's question
I have asked the same underlying question in other marketing conversations: has the activity turned into more revenue?
In one call, an operator showed progress for a countertop business whose website traffic had grown. Sales had not grown with it. We then focused on what visitors saw, how they could inquire, and what happened after they did.
I wrote that story in Your Marketing Reports Look Great. So Why Aren't Sales Growing?
In a Loom about conversion work, I wanted an operator to pull up a company's page, show where visitors were being lost, and explain the changes he would make.
That is the kind of specificity I want a business owner to get. What is the problem? What will you do? How does that work connect to the result I need?
Give the campaign a clear brief
For a small business, I would start the discussion with four questions:
- What business result are we trying to produce?
- What is happening today?
- What work will the operator take responsibility for?
- How will we review what happened?
The coffee shop conversation started with a planned purchase of mailers. It became a discussion about the event's sales goal and the help the owner wanted.
That is useful progress before any campaign launches. It makes the work easier to understand and gives both sides a clearer basis for deciding what to do.
Ask for help that includes ownership
The owner ultimately asked what it would cost for the operator to handle the marketing strategy. She could see there was work she wanted help with.
I want that help to make the owner's job easier. A proposal should explain what the operator will handle and what they still need from the business.
If you are planning a launch or campaign without a clear result in mind, get matched with a fractional marketing operator who can help define the goal and own the work needed to pursue it.