 |
|
Measuring Your Mediation Marketing Success
15 November 2006Questions of the day:
Are you mindful about your mediation marketing and business development?
Do you measure your activities and analyze your ROI (return on investment) or ROMD (return on your marketing dollar)?
Developing your business and practice is an evolutionary process.
We evolve as we try things, see what we really enjoy doing, see what works and see where the opportunities are and so on.
For the Mediation Marketing Institute business, I have discovered that I really love doing workshops and live events. I also really enjoy the success groups where we meet on the phone and I support other mediators as they build their dream practice. So, I want to plan my business activities around these services that I really enjoy and where I can really provide value to other peacemakers. Further, I need to analyze which of my marketing activities result in business development.
The same thing applies to your mediation or conflict management practice. Being mindful about your activities requires you to discover and ask yourself:
1) What am I doing that I truly enjoy?
2) What am I doing that is working? e.g. what has brought me new clients to date? (my web site?, blog? a free talk? networking?)
3) What isn’t working? (yet?) What has not brought me any tangible results to date?
Now, you need to be careful with the “what isn’t working” question and discovery process. Here’s why. What I have observed from my conversations with other mediators (and my own self-observation) is that if something is NOT working there is a reason for that and sometimes minor tweaks and distinctions can transform your efforts.
For example, you may be doing the right things (e.g. giving free presentations, speaking, writing, networking and so on) but you are going about them in the wrong (or shall we say “less effective”) ways. You may be committing some of these errors:
1) You may be approaching your efforts with the wrong mindset. You might be focusing on “what’s in it for you” instead of focusing on “what’s in it for them” and having your goal be to provide amazing value. This distinction can powerfully transform your efforts.
2) You may be scattered (unfocused) and failing to target your marketing. Have you selected a profitable niche to specialize in? Once you’ve done that, have you identified within that niche, who your ideal clients are and where you can find them? If you are publishing articles for other mediators this is not directed at your target market. In most cases, other mediators are not your target audience. Sure, you may get some referrals from your colleagues (depending on your niche, this is much more likely with family mediation) but the rest of you, don’t hold your breath.
3) You may have failed to position yourself as an expert. You will generate business when you are known as a credible and well-liked expert in your niche.
4) You may be giving up too soon. Maybe a strategy hasn’t worked yet… but remember it takes time to foster trust with your potential clients and to establish yourself as a credible expert in your niche. Remember, the marketing rule of 7 — people need a minimum of 7 contacts before they decide to buy. I think a similar rule applies in the service context.
5) You may not have effective lead generation tools in place. In order to build trust and credibility over time, you need to begin having a conversation with your potential clients. Lead generation activities where you bring them into your marketing cycle are critical. (More detail about this in another post).
Once you think about what you have been doing and what is working, the next step is to ask what your ROI is or ROMD.
Scenario #1
For example, if you give one presentation and get 2 new clients, that is an excellent use of your time. Say you spent 5 hours preparing the presentation (which you can reuse for future presentations) and .5 hours setting up the presentation and 2 hours giving the presentation. You spent 7.5 hours generating two new clients. Each client may be worth at least $2000 but over the lifetime of the relationship (unless it is a single use party, e.g. a divorcing couple) these clients may be worth much more. Maybe you earned new referral sources. These two new referral sources over the next 20 years of your business could lead to thousands and thousands of dollars in business for you.
So, your ROMD is very good in this scenario.
Scenario #2
Say you spent $2,000 on placing ads in local papers and generated no new business or leads. This would be a waste of money! (I don’t recommend print ads when you are starting out). Your ROMD is zero. Ok, not a good strategy.
Scenario #3
Say you spend $30 a month on google adwords and get 5 new sign-ups for your Employment Mediation newsletter and no new business (yet). You have generated leads for future business. This $30 may pay off in the long term. In this scenario, you will have to take a long term analytic approach. Give the new leads some time. If after one year of receiving your monthly newsletter these folks never contact you about a workplace mediation, you can then say it is probably not $30 a month well spent.
Scenario #4
If, however, in the above scenario you generated one new mediation case (worth $3,000) from your monthly newsletter (linked to your google ad words campaign), then over the course of a year the $360 you spent marketing was a good investment of your marketing dollars.
In this scenario you earned 8.3 times what you spent on marketing. (There are also the costs of putting up your website and writing the monthly newsletter which you may want to factor into the equation).
The point in the last scenario is that sometimes I see mediation marketers get impatient. If the mediation marketing strategy didn’t bring a pay off “right away” many people claim it is “not working.” When in fact, they just need to take a longer time horizon. It takes time to build a thriving practice. There are no “overnight success stories” — just 2-5 year hard working ones.
Go forth and be mindful in your mediation marketing. Provide value, become an expert, focus on a niche and be consistent. Measure your marketing efforts and remember to factor in “time.”
NEVER GIVE UP!
Your partner in peace,
Kristina Haymes
p.s. don’t forget to join our book club, coming next month one of my favorite mediation authors, Ken Cloke.
www.mediationmarketingsecrets.com
November 29th, 2006 at 9:42 pm
[…] It doesn’t take a mathematician to realize that as marketers we need to pay attention to what inputs lead to what outputs and to be strategic about how we use our resources (time, money, energy and people). See post on Measuring your success. […]