Desmond Tutu once said that “there is only one way to eat an elephant: a bite at a time.”
He was talking about when things seem daunting, they can be accomplished by taking on just a little at a time. And this advice can be used for those marketing professionals who work in the mortgage market.
The elephant in context
As the mortgage market continues to be dynamic, it delivers challenges that can seem overwhelming. This was clear in the findings from the Great Marketing Survey, by Mortgage Strategy and Mortgage Finance Gazette.
The survey showed that marketers were challenged by many things. This included a lack of time to do things properly and working with a reduced budget to achieve their biggest priorities – delivering sales growth and measuring ROI.
Fortunately there is a solution that lies in the Tutu quote – break things down and they will become less daunting.
How marketers can eat elephants
Sometimes when you have so much to do, you don’t know where to begin. This can be unnerving, and you end up simply doing more of the things you have always done. But the results are no different.
The answer lies in creating a plan for a new market and establishing goals that break everything down into things that are realistic and achievable. Goals with both short and longer-term milestones.
This helps you be more effective and more efficient so you do the right things right.
With the right goals in place, you can deliver sales growth, you can demonstrate your return on these objectives (rather than obsess with ROI) generate more time for yourself and make your budgets work harder.
Sales growth and the elephant
Sales targets can be daunting – so break these down. Instead of “we will increase sales by 10% by the end of the year”, be more specific in terms of where that growth will come – with near term and longer term targets.
Identify sales growth within different segments, because this makes things look more achievable. If you are a mortgage lender your goals could be: Convert 12% more registered brokers who submit cases; get 33% of brokers who submit one case to submit two cases or find 200 new brokers by expanding our distribution.
To make things achievable, aim for 5% growth in quarter one building to 10% from there, for example. Take one big bite
Despite the much-praised skill of multi-tasking, the reality is that humans can only focus fully on one thing at a time.
Too many goals can reduce the odds of success. So have fewer goals and identify the one that will deliver the best results – make this your priority and where most of your effort goes. I am not suggesting that everything else gets forgotten about, it is just that you need a different approach to the big goal.
Eat the same elephant When it comes to goals, it is vital marketing and sales are working to the same goals. How these goals will be delivered will be different, but you need to be eating the same elephant. That way sales targets are met, you have more time.
Measures of success With goals in place, you will have measures of success. These might be to increase brand salience (one of my favourite goals) by 15% or increase the net promotor score from 22 to 33. But you need lead and lag measures – otherwise these can seem daunting.
The lag will be the end measure of success (increase brand salience by 15%). However, by introducing lead measures which can increase brand salience by 5% in Q1, 8%, Q2, 12% Q3 and 15% Q4, things become more achievable.
Keep score Once you have your measures of success, communicate progress against these as often as you can – weekly, fortnightly or monthly, even if the dial has not changed much.
If you do not do this, people lose motivation and revert to focusing on areas that make no difference to the bottom line. Old habits return, and you end up running around in circles.
That ROI thing
Demonstrating ROI is a big priority for marketers. However, I see ROI as the wrong focus. It is daunting and a major distraction and what gets reported is not ROI anyway.
With marketing there are so many elements to attribution and unless you have a very sophisticated attribution modelling system, your time will be unwisely spent
Elephants and time
Like sales targets, break your time into chunks. Focus on what is important and cut out non- important work, which exists everywhere – essentially anything that does not contribute to your goals.Meetings can eat into time, so change the focus and discuss progress towards goals rather than discuss actions. And do this often as it saves time longer term.
Elephants and budgets
Getting more from a budget is key for marketers. This is why your plan and your goals are your starting point. Your metrics determine your end point. You will then work out how to achieve these goals.
With marketing, this often requires spending money. But as was reported, budgets are under pressure and understandably greater scrutiny.
The trick is to really know that elephant. The more marketers have insight, from research and from their data, the less guess work there is. This leads to sending the right message to the right person, through the right channel at the right time. It means being more effective and more efficient which means your marketing efforts are working harder – and you achieve your goals (and sales targets) and can do so by having more time to do those right things because you are goal led and don’t try to eat an elephant in one go.
Jeff Knight is a director of the Mortgage Marketing Forum
