I visited the offices of Epiphanies, Inc. this afternoon for a quick 15 minute chat about a client…. Three hours later I find myself back in my office with my head swimming!… Those “big picture”, “big idea” folks tend to do that to you.

In our discussion, we were discussing whether a topic was a “soft topic” or a “hard topic”… and the value of that determination on marketing…. Here’s a sample scenario;

If a marketing consultant creates a low-cost teleseminar on Improving Your Marketing (where one of the topics discussed might be creating a signage campaign), it is, indeed, a soft topic. Is this a bad thing?… Maybe not…. There will certainly be people who will want to hear what an expert has to say and will derive value from the experience…. BUT, what if it was turned into a hard topic? Would the perceived value increase?… We say “yes.”

The teleseminar might become “Top 10 Strategies to Improve Your Marketing”…. In the presentation, the discussion would be “Steps to objectively measure return on investment with a signage campaign.”… Wow, what a difference!

Allen Voivod’s three criteria for determining if something is “hard” are:

• Can you measure dollars (revenue, gross sales, net, etc.) in any way?
• Can you measure a percentage change (increased leads, sales forecasting, etc.)?
• Can you attribute any other objective, measurable number to the idea (widgets sold, web site traffic, etc.)?

This isn’t rocket science but if you look around you (at your marketing, specifically), you might find that you’re implementing A LOT of soft ideas…. Be brutal in your evaluation and change your strategy to MAKE IT HARD! If you can measure it, you can improve upon it and it will have meaning…. If you can’t measure it, it’s essentially worthless.

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