Do your marketing efforts help you make progress in your business or does it just maintain the status quo? Many times marketing is relegated to what worked in the past. But marketing messages and techniques have their life cycles. When they wear out, too many businesses just keep on using them. It is much like throwing an anchor over the side of a boat and then paddling like crazy and calling it forward movement. In actuality, all you are doing is frenetically paddling in circles.

How do you measure your marketing success? If you answered in reaching sales goals, you have the right answer. The ultimate measure of any marketing in a for-profit business is sales. However, there is a lot of marketing that happens before a customer lays a greenback across your palm. How do you know if you are truly making progress towards sales along the way? Part of that is measured in customer engagement in a phase of marketing we refer to as Awareness Marketing. In a three-phased approach, Awareness is the first step. It is based on the assumption that a customer will not buy from you unless they are truly aware of your product or service. I find that many people who are in charge of marketing understand Awareness Marketing. They do a lot of it. In fact, most web sites are built upon making the customer aware of your brand. The problem with an Awareness only approach to marketing is that it never transitions to the next phase, which is First Time Sales Marketing. This is where the pitch to convert prospects to customers happens. This transition point is where you can specifically measure the effectiveness of your Awareness Marketing efforts.

What are you doing to make your target market aware of your business products or services? After they are touched by these Awareness Marketing efforts, do they then transition into talking about an offer to do business together – quantities, prices, delivery time, etc.? If you find that acceptable levels of prospects are making this transition, you are making progress in your marketing efforts. However, if you find that no one is making this transition, then you need to do something different with your Awareness Marketing. You are dealing with ineffective marketing techniques.

In marketing, it is very easy to hold on to what you have always done and not really measure any progress. Being busy in marketing does not mean you are being effective. Pull up the anchor and re-examine what you are calling progress. Your business depends on it.