{"id":19685,"date":"2023-05-25T08:00:18","date_gmt":"2023-05-25T12:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hingemarketing.com\/?p=19685"},"modified":"2023-05-24T14:21:29","modified_gmt":"2023-05-24T18:21:29","slug":"3-return-on-marketing-investment-strategies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hingemarketing.com\/blog\/story\/3-return-on-marketing-investment-strategies","title":{"rendered":"Three Return on Marketing Investment Strategies Used by High-Growth Professional Services Firms"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s budgets for any kind of expenditure are carefully allocated and critically examined, with pressure to realize a strong return on investment for every penny spent. And in the hallways of professional services, where many firms get by on reputation and referral business, marketing investment is often the last thing firms want to spend money on because they aren\u2019t always convinced there will be a strong return. In this article, I\u2019ll explore the reasons for measuring return, how to measure return, and strategies for realizing the return firms expect.<\/p>\n

Hinge Research Institute\u2019s 2023 High Growth Study<\/a> serves as the foundation for this post, as it reveals what high-growth firms are doing to maximize their return on marketing investment both in dollars and effort. For context, we define a high-growth firm as one with a compound annual growth rate of 20% or greater over a three-year period.<\/p>\n

Why Measure Return?<\/h2>\n

Few would argue with the virtues of holding investments in time, money, and people accountable for desired results. Beyond pure accountability however, stakeholders really must have a consistent handle on whether their marketing techniques are aligned with twists and turns in the external environment.<\/p>\n

First, buyers are changing. Today\u2019s prospective clients are more informed and expect to easily find what they want when they want it. They demand that services are delivered with consistency, transparency, and value at every turn. As for their relationship with their provider, they require personalization, responsiveness, and accountability. Consistent tracking of marketing investments and their associated return will signal to marketing and leadership teams how closely aligned their strategies are with the clients they want to be building their pipeline around in the coming years.<\/p>\n

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See also: Inside the Buyer’s Brain, Fourth Edition: Executive Summary<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Second, the marketplace itself is changing. New competitors are crowding the services landscape and in some instances beating out incumbents with newer, faster, more relevant expertise. And while merger and acquisition activity may have tempered in some verticals, the purchasing, blending, and carving up of firms across professional services has transformed the way firms go to market. Finally, technology continues to erode geographic and other barriers that once figured so prominently in the buyer selection process.<\/p>\n

Each of these shifts and changes means that the effectiveness of specific marketing strategies and tactics will fluctuate.<\/p>\n

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Download the 2023 High Growth Study Executive Summary<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

3 Guiding Principles for Measuring your Return<\/h2>\n

Nothing\u2019s more frustrating than to see dollars spent on failed efforts. The question becomes why do so many marketing investments fail to deliver a solid return in the first place? In truth, there could be multiple answers, but one of the most common reasons marketing investments fail to live up to their expectations is that firms have no measurement of their performance. In fact our research<\/a> shows nearly 1 in 4 professional services firms don\u2019t do any kind of tracking or reporting on business development and marketing metrics.<\/p>\n

How can this be?<\/p>\n

A common challenge is understanding which metrics to track in the first place, and then figuring out how to report on them in a way that resonates with leadership who may not be in the trenches of marketing (and therefore won\u2019t get too excited about metrics like growth in social media followers). Below I offer three guiding principles to help your measuring stay on track.<\/p>\n

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  1. The first task in figuring out what to track and how to measure is to consider the following:\n