4IpaUJbnm

No common rules, but facilitators
Despite the abovementioned suggestions, experts agreed that there are no general
guidelines to determine which marketing action will be successful and which will not. Even
specialists (radio, marketing, regional newspaper) cannot always estimate the success or
failure of their created actions in advance. Albeit there are conditions that are perceived as
supportive:
Activation: things that activate work: a call to action, a call to share, a game, a voucher,
etc.
Combination: combine offline with online strategies and create in this way buzz. If your
SME or event was in the (local) newspaper, or on TV, or when you are sponsoring
somewhere, just share it on Facebook, or include photos on your website or in your
newsletter.
Seek for local recognition, engagement and word of mouth: neighbors or local
customers like to recognize their store or local SME on television and will talk to you
(and others!) about it. This reasoning can also be applied on the positive effects of a
striking or salient logo, sign or an attractive shop window.
First define achievable objectives/goals and target the right audience, before choosing a
marketing campaign in congruence with these goals/targets. For instance, it does not
make sense to focus on extra brand awareness if you're already known by 98% of the
public. Another example: if you want a younger customer base, you could organize a
workshop "making gingerbread” for parents with young children, or give a substantial
discount on the ‘1 st birthday’ cake of a young child. Putting an announcement in the
local newspaper would be the right marketing action when you will have an open house
day.
Keep track of the learnings
Enterprises can learn a lot by actively recording “learnings”. Large companies make their
knowledge explicit and keep track of their data, expenses, gains and statistics in a sheet or
document. They create a list including past successes and failures, as well as the conditions
and reasons why. SMEs also possess this kind of knowledge, but rather intuitively and tacitly
and on the basis of “gut feeling”. They know for example that sponsorship feels as a waste
of money, or a fair does not result in the expected values (turnover, new customers). They,
however, do not have the money and the time to keep track of the objective data. However,
according to our experts, they should write this information down at least.
ROI: current state
Academics and experts have a theoretical idea about how companies could measure the
profitability of their marketing campaigns with (a) tool(s). Some companies already employ
such tools, whether based on a simple Excel sheet, or on sophisticated (statistical) programs
such as SPSS, Tableau, QlikView or ERP packages. However, many (small) companies do not
use such tools, although they keep track of some simple, concrete elements like the stack of
coupons, or the actual number of visitors at a fair or open house day.
ROI: a jumble of elements and metrics?
The core elements of a ROI tool are costs and revenues. However, (a) both elements result
in different definitions and calculation methods. Furthermore, (b) there is no one-to-one
124