By Erica Stritch

"Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted counts."
~Albert Einstein

"Marketing in a down economy" is all the rage in the world of marketing advice. Most everything I read has some economic focus. And—surprise, surprise—when it comes to marketing, regardless of the path the advice takes, the destination seems the same: Measure your marketing and focus on your return on investment (ROI).

It's good advice for sure; you should always tie marketing activities and tactics to revenue generation. But it's not that simple for the professional service firm. Follow the "measure every tactic, drop activities with low return" advice and you could do more harm than good.

The services sales cycle tends to be long and requires much focus on starting, maintaining, and enhancing relationships. Marketing can be a critical component of all facets of relationship building, and each phase—starting, maintaining, and enhancing—frequently takes multiple touches through different methods and extended time to realize their effect. This makes it very difficult to measure ROI on a tactic-by-tactic, short-term basis.

For example, let's say you are an accounting firm and your marketing plan centers around the following tactics:

• Newsletter: You send a monthly company newsletter to prospects and clients to share fresh content and to interact with your readers.
• Seminars: You run a series of education-based breakfast seminars. You invite clients and prospects to attend these seminars via mail, email, and phone.
• Articles: You write a monthly column for several major trade publications in your area(s) of expertise.
• Speeches: Partners at the firm give speeches at industry conferences and events.
• Direct Mail: Direct mail letters and offers (articles, white papers, seminar invitations, case studies, etc.) are sent to clients and prospects on a bi-monthly basis.

In addition to these marketing tactics, you just spent considerable time and money on website and identity design. And now, you look as strong as you can.

If we were to take this marketing plan, break it down, and look at tactics individually to determine the ROI of each, you will find that some tactics produce significantly higher, immediate ROI (as measured by immediate leads or immediate clients) than others.

One might look at this and think that it makes sense to focus only on those tactics with the "highest ROI" and cut the others. A logical, solid plan, right? Not necessarily.

Let's look at a couple of possible situations:

• Newsletter: If you were to measure the effectiveness of the monthly newsletter, you may find that you’ve gotten very few inquiries and even fewer clients as a direct result.
  
  However if you were to factor in the influence the newsletter has had on your ability to 1) stay in touch and in front of prospects over the course of the long sales cycle; 2) demonstrate your expertise in articles published in your newsletter; and 3) move prospects along in the cycle by announcing your seminars and other offers to engage them with your thinking and expertise—you may find that your newsletter is indispensible for your marketing efforts. But...it's tough to measure.
  
  
• Speaking: You may give a speech at an industry conference and, three months later, have zero leads and zero new clients from that one speech. Does that mean that speaking is not a good marketing tactic?
  
  Fortunately, you offered everyone at that speech a white paper through your next newsletter and got 75 business cards (and thus 75 newsletter subscribers). 18 months later, you hear from a prospect and win them as a new client to the tune of $500,000. Turns out that client originally met you at the event, and has been following your newsletters, reading your articles, and getting your event invitations the whole time...but didn't speak up until now.
  
  If you judged the one-year ROI of speaking at this event, it would seem like a dud. Another six months and...much better. But how good would the ROI from speaking have been if you cut your newsletter and the prospect didn't get the monthly reminder of how fabulous you are and how good your thinking is? Or if you looked like a small firm because you didn't focus energy and budget on your website look and your firm graphic identity?

The same largely holds true for each of the other tactics. Take one out from the mix and you may see a drop in overall marketing effect. Take several out of the mix and focus only on the "high ROI" activities and those high ROI activities may lose a lot of steam. Marketing effectiveness is derived from the sum of the parts, not from the parts themselves.

Should you throw marketing and ROI measurement out the window? Hardly. The trick is finding the right measurements, selecting the right measurement timeframes, and understanding how the various marketing pieces work together to drive revenue.

One thing is for sure, get too enamored with slicing and dicing your tactics, keeping only those with the most visible ROI, and you could find yourself in a hole of your own digging at the worst time...when the economy turns around and prospects start spending!