Monday, December 23, 2019

MBA in a Nutshell #18 - Marketing : How to know how well you are doing ?

[ Today also marks the 100th day anniversary of my father's passing. My father would like me and my mother to move on with our lives. In 2020, I will be looking forward to travelling with my mother after today. ]

It took 18 articles to complete the section on Marketing. This is a broad subject that can allow a person to sustain a career for an entire lifetime.

Let us now summarise at a strategic level, what a marketer would need to do to measure his performance :

a) How does the organization deal with inquiries?

The marketer needs to track enquiries and find ways to address them. For my own business I have a Whatsapp group with my sales team to answer questions that come from potential conversions.

Outsourcing the common queries is something that is continuous but can be rewarding.

b) How much does the organisation pay per unit sale ?

The first metric is the amount spent for each lead or inquiry. The second metric is how much is spent per conversion. I am fairly confident my partner does this well although I do not have full visibility on this.

c) How much is spent on media and production costs ?

All the FB videos you see by other trainers cost a lot of money and erodes their earnings. I wonder whether they know that, not only do these videos it erode their earnings, they also annoying the hell out of the public.

All that being said, my production costs are not zero.

d) What are the characteristics of your customer ?

The company needs to have an idea of the age, gender, profession and psychological makeup of their customer. I am still grappling with this because I serve multiple segments. Millenials have different needs from retirees but both groups attend my program,

e) Are we hearing from decision makers ?

There is a difference between a key decision maker as opposed to a preview seminar junkie. We know the names of those who will attend every preview but have no intentions to sign up and we are fine with this, one or two actually count as my friends.

As this is a statistical game, we will  have to keep targetting a population who are happy to convert.

f) Dollar value per customer ?

Once we obtain a customer, the customer will have a long term value to the business line.

Actually, I actively avoid doing this, preferring to build a closed community that will function as a "portable brain" to support my investment portfolio moving forward. With enough smart people and a burgeoning portfolio, my community should pay for itself.

Maybe one day I might be able to develop an advanced investing class for existing members of my community.

g) Percentile analysis 

This part analyses the spending behaviour of existing customers to isolate those who can be up sold to for future offerings. A company should give these customers VIP status and find creative ways to part ways with  those that cost more than the value they bring to the bottom line.

h) Bottom Line.

Ar the end of the day, a business owner should know how much they contribute to the bottom line. Those should come in the form of an income statement. 

I was able to get visibility on my numbers recently for 2019 and I think I can bring this year to a satisfying close.

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