5 Marketing Tips That Increase Profits and Generate Inquiries
We’ve all been there …
You’ve carefully crafted a marketing program. You’ve polished each marketing tool. You’ve racked your brain for the very best marketing tactics.
You present it to the board with a sigh of relief. That’s done.
But when you look at your marketing key performance indicators, you notice that they aren’t as good as you’d hoped, and the leads are disappointing. It’s depressing.
Does it feel like a big challenge to get people to take action, generate leads, make the phone ring, or cause people to ask for your products or services?
It doesn’t really need to be so hard. You’re about to learn the 5 Marketing Tips That Increase Profits and Generate Inquiries.
Ready?
#1. Offer your boss or the key decision makers an enticement to fail. Beyond having strategic marketing objectives, the reality is that if you don’t take risks and adapt to today’s dynamic business environment, the business won’t grow.
That enticement you offer your boss of DMU (Decision Making Unit) may be information from the campaign that’s considered valuable or insightful, but whatever it is get their permission to fail. If you don’t have a right to fail, you don’t have an opportunity to grow. The business challenge is learning from your failures and turning them into future successes.
#2. Know thy customer. This is particularly important for organizations that have limited resources. Assume the prospects you’re looking for are similar to your current buyers. Create a buyer profile based on 5 factors:
Factor 1. Consider the purchaser’s priorities,
Factor 2. How does the buyer measure success,
Factor 3. What are the customer’s perceived barriers,
Factor 4. What is the prospect’s purchase journey, and
Factor 5. What the buyer’s decision criteria.
#3. Spend less time marketing to strangers and more time marketing to friends. Existing customers are easier to market to and yield higher margins than new customers since you know who they are and you don’t need to pay for third-party media to acquire them. Customer retention is about helping customers get more value from you than they originally expected. To this end, engage your customers in dialogue to discover any issues or hurdles.
#4. Use marketing combinations. Marketing is a one-two punch. In business, potential prospects are sent electronic and traditional mailings, called for follow-ups, visited in-person and presented with digital, TV and radio ads. One ad, in a vacuum, is usually not enough to convert a target audiences. Similarly, midsize businesses should realize that no one medium bests all the others. Platforms don’t compete with each other, they compliment each other.
#5.Test every element of your marketing. As attention continues to be segmented and marketing tactics continues to be every changing, it’s critical to test every element of your marketing to ensure it yields optimal results. Improved results don’t require more marketing. You must determine what works best in each context for your specific audience.
Question: What other marketing tips do you have?
About the Author: Patrick McFadden is a marketing consultant/coach for small businesses and midsize organizations. He’s also an American Express OpenForum Advisor. He develops marketing plans and strategies for getting and keeping profitable clients using low-cost but effective marketing methods.
Indispensable Marketing takes a process approach to developing and installing your small business marketing.