Over the past 15 years I’ve met with many SME’s and spoken to the board of directors at larger companies and I find it incredible just how many business owners still don’t analyze their marketing performance. Time and time again I’ve heard the same kind of statement such as “We’ve tried that and it doesn’t work” or “We do it because that’s what we all do in this industry”, then when I ask to see their marketing reports I’m told “We don’t do that because we just don’t have the time” or “How are we supposed to measure that?”
I can’t stress enough just how important it is to take control of your marketing strategy, and analyzing the results is just as important as developing the initial strategy itself. However, I do understand that the MD doesn’t always have the time to look through pages of spreadsheets and charts to get an idea of how each type of marketing is performing. Sometimes a snap shot is all that’s needed to make the powers that be take notice. So here’s a little tip to help with that.
The Boston Matrix (Tweaked)
This matrix was developed by the Boston Consulting Group back in the early 70s in order to visualize a product portfolio to identify where best to use resources to maximize profit. The Boston Matrix describes the impact of market share and market growth on businesses by using four categories: cash cows, stars, problem children and dogs (see below)
Taking this simple diagram you can remove the market share and market growth and replace products with your various types of marketing. It will give you an easy to visualise diagram of the current performance of your marketing channels.
Now it becomes very easy to visualise what’s working and what isn’t, allowing you to see what needs analysing in more detail to understand the problems with those channels and where valuable resources should be placed. The idea is to work out how to move Problem Children in to Stars and Stars in to Cash Cows in terms of marketing performance, and whether to work harder on the Dogs or make the decision to drop them all together.
