More inquiries or better orders? How to set up a marketing plan

Start by choosing the right order

For a small team, a recurring and well-prepared order may be more valuable than many one-off requests with unclear scope. Rather, which orders you can handle reliably, what documents you need and where the most rework occurs.

Then select the offer you want to support. You don't have to promote all services with the same intensity. If production or installations do not have a free date, advertising with the promise of fast delivery will create a problem. The marketing plan should also be based on what the company can accomplish.

Agree on a common meaning of a good query

A marketer and a campaign manager may mean something else by quality contact. One side follows the completed form, the other needs a budget, a deadline and a specific subject of the order. The definition should be simple and applicable for every inquiry.

An example of the proposed definition: the customer requests a service from your offer, has indicated the contact, the basic scope and the deadline, and there is a real possibility to complete the order. Not everything has to be known at the first report. It is important to record what is missing and who will complete the information.

See where opportunities are being lost

If the contacts are coming in, but the offers are not being sent, the problem may not be in the ad. A price list, processing capacity or a clear next step may be missing. If offers are sent, but the customer does not respond, the comprehensibility of the offer and the appropriateness of the original inquiry must also be examined.

Google makes it possible to import results that arise after online contact back into campaign measurement. This is one way to give marketers a better picture of the quality of opportunities. However, our organizational proposal starts earlier: the company must register these results at all and use the same statuses.

Prepare a short report that leads to a step

The report should show what happened and what decision is needed. Supplement the number of contacts with the number of qualified inquiries, offers and received orders. Also track the age of pending inquiries and agreed reasons for loss.

With a small number of orders, pay attention to the conclusions from a single week. One large order can change the ratio significantly. Compare the results with a similar period and always taking into account changes in the budget, offer and capacity.

• What is waiting for an answer today and who is responsible?
• Which offers do not have an agreed next step?
• Where are inappropriate or incomplete queries increasing?
• Which one change will we verify in the next period?

The first plan should be concrete and manageable

Choose one main service, define a suitable customer and adjust the page and the inquiry procedure. Set responsibility for response and record the result. Only when this path is clear, add more channels and a bigger budget.

Automation can prepare a morning report, highlight an unanswered query or pre-populate an offer. However, it does not replace the missing decision about what orders you want and under what conditions you can deliver them. A good strategy therefore connects advertising with the day-to-day functioning of the company.