Every day marketers are faced with more and more tactical choices that they can implement to reach their goals and objectives. There is direct mail, email, phone outreach, SEO, SEM, print advertising, digital advertising, retargeting, geofencing, word of mouth, and on and on and on. Some days it feels like there are simply too many choices and too much pressure to jump on using the latest and greatest tactics available. How do you decide what to do and what to pursue? It is believed that even though the newest and shiniest object is fun and exciting and can work most associations need to take a step back and make sure that everything they do in their marketing plan allows them to be effective and efficient.
Be Efficient
All organizations are faced with limited resources. To simplify things it is smart to focus on three major areas of potential limitations; human resources, financial resources and technological resources. Since almost every entity has potential shortages in one or more of those areas it is critical that marketers are efficient with everything they do.
When doing some online research the following definition of efficiency was discovered:
Efficiency measures the success of your process. – ReachForce, June 10, 2019
This is a good starting point but for associations efficiency means much more than just do you have the right process. Being efficient means you use the right tactics, the right people and the right technology in your processes. If you are not getting the most activity using the minimal effort you are not being efficient and are therefore spending your time in one area when it could be better spent elsewhere. Good processes are a great start but it needs to go further.
Be Effective
It is not enough to just be efficient. Your marketing must also be effective which means that every marketing tactic you implement must result in the maximum return. Oftentimes return is measured in dollars but organizations have varied goals so revenue may not be the only way to determine success. Before you implement anything it is important to understand how success is to be measured and then make sure that your tactical implementation involves more or less only options that will allow you to get there.
It is understood that effective and efficient may not always be the most exciting. It may in fact be a bit boring but as marketers it is important that we reach our goals and objectives and despite more and more choices every day our resources will always be limited and we will always be judged based on results not on how much cool stuff we used on the road to less than stellar results.
This article was originally written for, and posted on, AMSJobs.com.