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Ideas4Rent
Marketing
Improve
Your Marketing Results
by
Don MacLeod - 4/23/08
You might have
tried your hands with some marketing efforts but you don't exactly feel like
wearing a smile on your face. Never mind. Brush off the failure or rather
not so successful attempts for now. Let's look at the future.
One of the ways to
make a bright future is to avoid mistakes you have made in the past, right?
Review
your past marketing activities
Look back at all
the marketing activities you undertook and figure out which one of them got
you more clients, customers, increased sales and profits for your business?
Now that you have thought of this, you know at least vaguely, which ones
work for you and which ones don't. Delete those that don't work for you.
Broadening
horizon
Anything that you
do to put your products/services in front of your prospects is marketing. So
do not limit yourself to just sending direct mails or running ads.
Creativity can play a role here.
Convert every
opportunity into a marketing opportunity. If you get to meet your prospects,
spread awareness about the new products, special offers, changes you have
made in your business etc.
Pass around
business cards when you meet a prospect in person. Online, include your
b-card or your email signature stating your name, email address, website
address and even your tagline, when you send emails or any material.
Track
sales to marketing
You should be able
to connect a new or increased sale to a particular marketing effort of
yours. Check if you have got any direct or indirect increase in sale, new
customers etc. because of a particular activity. Then quantify the same. How
many new sales or new customers did you get?
If tracking the
past seems difficult, then consider tracking your current customers. Ask
them as to how they found you. Conduct surveys to gauge customer
satisfaction and slip in a question or two about how they found you. At the
end of the exercise, you will have your marketing activities jotted down
along with their numbers alongside.
Draw
a line
Now that you know
what works for you, you have also zeroed in on those that do not work for
you. Separate these activities from those that actually result in business.
Rework on these strategies or drop them once and for all. Think of new ones.
Remember, what works for someone else need not always work with you. If you
feel like there is no point continuing a particular marketing effort, then
drop it.
Plan
for the next year
Index all such
information you collect. All this will come in handy while you plan for the
next year, with new targets. Do not implement marketing strategies whose
performance in terms of successful sale or new customers, you have not been
able to track.
Track
future activities
All you have to do
is ask your new customers as to have they found you. For special offers and
discount coupons, circulate flyers and insist that the prospect brings the
same to you, in order to avail the offer.
Over a period of
time, with careful tracking and appropriate decisions thereof, you will
figure how much and where exactly to invest on, as far as marketing
expenditure is concerned to reap the maximum out of what you have.
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