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Modern Marketing -
Through marketing you create the opportunity to educate your target market on how to succeed at their goals using your solutions. It is a process that turns into a sale and never ends.
My definition of marketing: Marketing is absolutely every bit of contact any part of your business has with any segment of the public.
Here are some of my tips to modern marketing:
1. Marketing is simply maths - if the math works it's good marketing if it doesn't it's bad marketing. In other words to turn your marketing cost into an investment you need to test and meausre all campaigns.
2. It is six times more expensive to acquire a new customer than to sell more products and services to existing customers. To market cost effectively, keep in touch with existing customers.
3. Know your True Customer Acquisition Cost: Once you know how much it costs you to buy a customer, and as long as you are making more per customer than that cost, you're making profits... Give me a call and I'll show you how to measure it.
4. Marketing is not over once you made the sale, it's the follow up that makes all the difference to profits... 68% of repeat business is lost due to perceived indifference; they don't think you care.
5. For every feature listed on any marketing material add a benefit. It's not about marketing what you do it's about marketing what your customers get out of what you do that makes the difference.
6. Even in a competitive market you can create a niche by becoming the best at what you do. What stands you apart from your competition? When people hear the name of your business what springs to their mind? Niche = no price competition.
7. Many businesses market on quality and service, unfortunately so do their competition... Quality is not what you put into your product or service it's what your customers get out of them. Excellent service is anything your customer wants it to be, find out what that is.
8. People are not interested in you or how long you have been in business or how big you are - they are interested in themselves - so your website must be oriented to your visitors.
9. Social media - You can try to ignore it but it's not going away. More than 60% of businesses now use it. Think of it as your new interactive CRM allowing you to communicate and most importantly build relationships and brand recognition.
10. Do you have a marketing budget as a percentage of your projected gross sales? To succeed you must put equal effort, time and resource into marketing as you do operations and financial control.
Marketing is not as spectator sport... think about it, plan for it, and commit to it. I use a very simple, proven and effective 7 stage marketing plan... give me a call and I will help you implement it.
