.png?width=1500&height=398&name=CO_Corporate%20Logo%202021_4C_HOR_FNL-1%20(1).png)
Does Your Contracting Pipeline Live in the Owner’s Head?
Relationships matter in construction, and most subcontractors have good ones. The owner or president carries the key customer relationships, and the project managers carry everything else. That arrangement can work well. It is also fragile. In our last post, we asked whether you know by name who owns each strategic account. This one looks at what happens when the answer is the owner.
Avoiding Random Acts of Marketing: Five Essential Strategies
Wed, Mar 20, 2024 — Ever wonder why some marketing initiatives crash and burn despite leadership oversight? The culprit often lurks in one fatal flaw: random acts of marketing. In this article, we delve into five indispensable strategies for dodging these missteps and the dire consequences that follow when marketing lacks a solid game plan.
Preparing for 2024: Is Your Marketing Funnel Integrated with Your Sales Funnel?
Wed, Dec 20, 2023 — Final article of the 7-part series: Accelerating Growth In 2024 with Strategic Business Planning In the relentless pursuit of growth, businesses often find themselves at a crossroads - a bustling marketing funnel generating a stream of leads, yet somehow, the path to conversion seems elusive. One study found that 71% of potential customers are not contacted, while only 13% of potential customers become opportunities.
How to Allocate Your Marketing Spend for Maximum Effect
Tue, Dec 19, 2023 — Accelerating Growth In 2024 with Strategic Business Planning, Part 6 In a marketplace that's more competitive than ever, optimizing your marketing spend isn't just a best practice—it's a necessity for survival and accelerated growth. With shrinking resources and an ever-more diverse array of marketing platforms upon which to reach the customer, shooting arrows in the dark is no longer a viable marketing strategy.
5 Things You Should Know Before Spending on Marketing Execution
Thu, Nov 9, 2023 — Accelerating Growth In 2024 with Strategic Business Planning, Part 5 If you have been under pressure to tighten your marketing budget this year, you’re not alone. According to a survey, B2B companies' marketing spending in 2023 increased by only 2.3%. This growth rate is lower than the 3.7% inflation rate, impacting businesses and individuals.
7 KPIs That Should be in Your Annual Growth Plan
Fri, Nov 3, 2023 — Executive Takeaways Track these 7 KPIs monthly and quarterly: Revenue/Profit/GM against trajectory, Customer Acquisition Rate, Customer Retention Rate, Monthly Customer Average Value, Cost of Lead Generation, Lead Conversion Rate, and ROAS by Channel. Assign a named owner to each KPI—not a department, a specific person accountable for the number. Break every metric down by segment and channel to identify where performance is actually strong or weak. Make all KPIs visible to your entire leadership team on the same cadence to eliminate selective reporting and enable faster problem-solving. Measure demand creation and demand capture separately—they serve different purposes and should be held to different standards. Accelerating Growth With Strategic Business Planning, Part 4 The 7 essential KPIs for an annual growth plan are: 1) Revenue, Profit, and Gross Margin Against Trajectory, 2) Customer Acquisition Rate, 3) Customer Retention Rate, 4) Monthly Customer Average Value, 5) Cost of Lead Generation, 6) Lead Conversion Rate, and 7) Return on Marketing Spend by Channel. Together, these metrics tell you what is being spent, whether it is being spent efficiently, whether it is producing the right kind of demand, and whether your sales organization is converting that demand into revenue.
How to Establish a Strategic Growth Plan and Justify Your Marketing Budget
Wed, Oct 25, 2023 — Accelerating Growth With Strategic Business Planning, Part 3 Post 3 of 7 in a blog series on accelerating growth through strategic business planning. Conditions move fast. Customer expectations shift, competitors adjust, and technology keeps changing how companies reach buyers. So the first question to ask about your growth plan is whether it reflects the year ahead or simply repeats the year behind.
Analyze Your Current Customers to Supercharge Your Annual Business Planning
Thu, Oct 19, 2023 — Executive Takeaways Segment by profit, not revenue – Your largest customers by revenue may not be your most profitable once you account for cost to serve, discounts, and retention. Customer lifetime value (CLV) is the metric that matters – Calculate the total profit each customer generates over their relationship with you to identify where to focus. The 80/20 rule applies to your customer base – Typically 15-25% of customers generate 70-80% of profit; identify and prioritize this group. Ask customers directly why they buy – Survey your best customers about what drove their decision and what prevents them from buying more. Measure referrals like any other channel – Referred customers typically convert faster, cost less, and stay longer. Accelerating Growth With Strategic Business Planning, Part 2 Post 2 of 7 in a blog series on accelerating growth through strategic business planning. Customer analysis for business planning is the systematic process of examining your existing customer base to identify who generates the most profit, why they buy from you, and how to find more customers like them—turning historical data into actionable inputs for your annual plan. When we ask clients why their customers buy from them, the answers fall into three groups. Some know precisely. Some do not know and say so. And some are confidently, expensively wrong.
Why You Can’t Afford to Cut Your Marketing Investment
Wed, Oct 11, 2023 — Executive Takeaways Cutting $1 from marketing loses many times that amount in revenue opportunity Economic downturns reduce market noise, creating opportunity to steal share from competitors Marketing investment differs from marketing expenditure in that it generates a measurable return, typically 2–10x the dollars spent, rather than being a sunk cost Use the 40/70 Rule to make decisions with enough information to act, but not so much that the opportunity passes Before approving AI tools, ensure you have clear customer priorities, reliable data, defined workflows, and human oversight Accelerating Growth With Strategic Business Planning, Part 1 Post 1 of 7 in a blog series on accelerating growth through strategic business planning. In our last post, we made the case for why written, cross-functional planning is the first step toward building a growth system rather than just completing an annual exercise. This post gets into what that means for your marketing budget, specifically what to protect, what to cut, and how to make the call without flying blind.
Accelerating Growth With Strategic Business Planning
Tue, Oct 3, 2023 — Introduction: Take Action Now to Plan for Success Introduction to a seven-part blog series on accelerating growth through strategic business planning. The annual planning cycle is starting, which means you are sharpening your pencil, corralling your leadership team, and bracing for the meeting where everyone agrees on the number and disagrees on everything else. Strategic business planning is the process of aligning your leadership, data, and vision to create a documented roadmap for revenue and profit growth.