Stop Your Marketing Leaks
Thirty percent of all the drinkable water that runs between the plant and your faucet is lost to leaky pipes. In marketing, thirty percent of our business is lost to leaky follow up. Even professional sales people have leaky follow up when they stop after one or two contact points.
How much business are you letting get lost to your leaky pipes. Here are some ways to tape them up or you may have to replace some fittings:
1. Do a check up of your follow-up system from the time of precontact to six months later. Since only 2% of sales occur after a first contact and does not go up until the fifth contact -- it goes to 80% then -- what is your follow- up plan of action between the first contact point and the fifth?
This means that if you e-mail them once or twice there is less than 2% they will read it. People are very busy and even if you put the same message out week after week, there is less than 13% chance that they will even notice it's the same message.
And they will need to see it at least 5 times before they will "really" read it. Follow- up is an easy plan, that is, once you sit down and plan it out.
2. I read a book this weekend, Marketing Outrageously. In it, Jon Spoelstra, puts it so well, "Prepare yourself in writing." Another favorite saying I keep on my wall is, "If it ain't written down, it's a wish floating in the wind." I don't remember the author.
Create a plan. Even if it is a struggle to do so, create one the best way you can, yet it needs to be in writing. Creating a marketing plan is not something that comes by osmosis.
I have read plenty of books on creating a marketing plan, however, until I worked with an expert I just could not make it simple. And until I made it simple, I would do it -- catch 22. Find an expert, hire them, and learn it. It will make the difference between success and struggle.
3. Never stop marketing -- not even in the good times. Never be too busy to market. There is a time lag in any marketing between the time of first contact and the buy. That lag time can be devastating to a business operating on the edge. It also causes a feast or famine roller coaster ride for the business. If you are too busy, leverage your resources by outsourcing.
4. Find your rhythm and make it work with productivity. Are you a morning person or does your energy crash around 2 PM?
Tony Robbins taught me an exercise a long time ago that still works to this day. I read all my research material, write down all the questions, and then go to sleep. When I wake up the plan is outlined for me and most if not all my questions are answered. You can use this same exercise by doing this before you talk a walk or exercise.
A few of my clients told me they do it before they get in the shower or are taking a long drive with someone who doesn't talk much. When the answers or plan is not answer in the morning, it usually presents itself within a few days all on its own.
What I like about this method is how more innovative methods show themselves that can be completed with fewer resources. My last leak pursuit began with 20 steps and missing pieces that ended up with five steps and no holes. The unconscious mind is a power tool we forget too often that is on our side.
5. Stop all unproductive marketing activities that are not boosting your profits. If the ROI isn't there almost immediately, rethink it and adjust or eliminate.
You need be able to measure your marketing efforts in some form. Most people just don't like doing it, so they jester it off as impossible. Know where your clients come from. If you only have a few, then trace them back to their origin. If you do not know, ask them, and then record it.
Next, ask the question, "What can I do more to attract clients in this same method?" A client in New Zealand just recently learned that her ad in the local paper is productively attracting clients. Originally, she wanted to change it. It wasn't delivering the 5 to 1 ratio I recommend for her industry -- coaching -- yet it is attracting a 3 to 1 ratio.
A good ratio for a country that is just learning about coaching. Shoot for a 5 to 1 ratio -- for every $1 you spend, you need to make $5.
6. Market more frequently to your current customer base - much more often. Very few professionals that I have talked too stay in touch with existing and past customers often enough. They think they might be "bothering" them by telling them about new products or opportunities you have. Guess what, this is a fable.
The easier you make it for them, the more they will appreciate it. There is so much hype of "too much e-mail." Some people are going to be offended if they get one a month from you, do not be concerned, let them go.
Staying in touch is must for keeping your name in front of people. And if you don't, people are too busy to remember you when they need what you offer again. They will always use whatever is easiest to remember at the time. Even if you were dynamic before.
7. Leverage your time by outsourcing whatever mechanical tasks you can. Hire a virtual assistant to help manage communications. The lag time between the time you hire them and the ROI (return on your investment in them) is about 2-3 months (before the dollars follow your leveraging).
Always hire others that you can pay less than yourself. If you are paid to write at $75 an hour, hire a typist at $15 an hour. Stop wanting it all. Keep the money flow going and you will attract more. It is also good for the economy. If errands are not productive for you, hire a high school or college student part-time to do them. If you can hire a student for less than what you make, do it.
Fight the fear of, "Will I be able to pay them?"
Well, here are six great ideas to check for leaks in your business. Don't let the fish get away, fish with the right hook. Catherine Franz, a Certified Professional Marketing & Writing Coach, specializes in product development, Internet writing and marketing, nonfiction, training. Newsletters and articles available at: http://www.abundancecenter.com blog: http://abundance.blogs.com
Related News
|
 |
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
Marketing Apathy Solutions: 10 Solutions for Overcoming Apathy Beginning Today
Are you suffering from feelings of indifference or a lack of concern when it comes to marketing your business? Do you lack the passion that's necessary to attract customers to your business?
Take It To The Customer
In the past, purchasing ad space was the solution to every entrepreneur's marketing challenge. Then it was direct mail, followed by telemarketing. But with advertising and postage costs on the rise, these tactics have lost some of their appeal.
What to Include in Your Marketing Plan Write-Up
For those new to marketing planning, the thought of completing a plan from start to finish may feel daunting. It need not. The level of detail you choose to include in your marketing plan will depend on your resources and situation. If you have extremely limited manpower or other resources, you may be constrained to a "broad brush" approach. If your plan must support your Website's validity to others in the company, a lot of back-up detail may be appropriate.
So What Do You Do?
Once you have the attention of a business prospect, at some point in the conversation, the prospect will ask you, "So what do you do?". In most cases, you will only have 60 seconds, to catch the interest of the prospect. Therefore, your response to this questions needs to be specific enough to tell what you do, but interesting enough for the prospect to ask for more information.
Small Business Marketing Tip ? Putting the Customer First.
I am a great believer in the keeping to the basics ? the totally obvious things that we all learn in Running Your Business 101, and then promptly forget. I often have people come up to me after a speech and say, "This is all blindingly obvious, just common sense." And they are right, but my immediate response is always the say, "So are you doing it??"
SMS for the Estate Agent - Targeted Marketing Tool, or Legal Minefield?
Imagine having at your disposal a means to immediately inform house buyers that you have just the property they are looking for. Potential buyers have given their details and their preferences - imagine that you can send them this information no matter where they are or what they are doing, they can read it at a time that's convenient and can act accordingly in their own time. Imagine that you can do this quickly and easily, in a matter of minutes, regardless of the number of recipients.
What Does Marketing Mean?
You can have the best little business ever with wonderful potential, but if you can't market it, you don't have a business at all.
Write Articles WITHOUT Writing!
Face it, writing any article can be a tedious and time
consuming task for a beginner or even an expert writer.
Here are four ways to make writing articles a lot easier:
1) Use My Articles - You could add your own name, resource box and web site link to 199 of my prewritten articles. You can even rewrite them if you want. Just allow other people to republish them. For details visit:http://www.ldpublishing.com/viralarticletoolkit.html
2) Interview An Expert - You could interview an expertin exchange for free publicity. Just ask them questions.It could be about their personal and/or professional life.You want the interview to be long enough to create an article.
3) Excerpts Of Information - You could ask a writer or publisher to use excerpts of their information to create an article in exchange for giving them free publicity. You both could share the resource box of the article.
4) Hire A Ghostwriter - You could hire a ghostwriter to write an article for you. They would write it and you could add your name as the author, a resource box and your web site link.----
Marketing Mimics Life
Clichés. We've all heard them...and hear some of them so often that we categorize them as tired, stale old sayings. But, the fact is, particularly in both life and in small business marketing, that there is a validated truth in these commonly applicable and very popular clichés.
Marketing to a Critical Mass
In "Developing a Marketing Plan", we covered the first steps to developing a marketing plan and tracking where your customers are coming from.
How to Turn Your Marketing Into a Money-Making Machine - Setting The Stage For Successful Marketing
Powerful Marketing has become elusive to many companies seeking
strong sales results and overall growth. The sad truth is that Marketing
comes across as a rather frustrating process. After all, how do you
guarantee the outcome of a campaign when it is unclear what will work
and what will not? As someone once said, 90% of Advertising doesn't
work-the question is, which 90%!
What Does Your Business Address Say?
If you are operating a business from your home and
your post office address clearly indicates a home
address, you may want to re-think your marketing
strategy.
The Truth About The Fallacy Of 7
Ted Nicholas is a marketer with a proven track record. He has started, operated and sold 21 profitable businesses, and is responsible for the direct or indirect publishing of hundreds of books and publications. Ted Nicholas is a well- known and respected leader in the information marketing business.
The 30 Incredible Ways To Sell Your Products Now and Sell More
How to sell more and sell quickly online for your products and service? Here is the long list for your reference.
Take The Test: Does Your Marketing Copy Sell?
Your marketing materials must grab your prospect's attention long enough to
convince them to investigate further. Assuming you get past this hurdle, your
piece's message must next convince the reader to call or buy.
Direct Mail Response Rates Soar With Dimensional Mailers in Business-to-Business Lead Generation
The toughest job you face as a B2B direct marketer is reaching your prospect with your message. Reaching C-level executives is particularly difficult because they employ mailroom staff and executive secretaries who screen their mail, or your mail, depending on how you look at it. So unless your direct mail lead generation letter or postcard or self-mailer stands out from the rest, it won't reach the desk of your potential client.
How to Up-Sell Change
As Freud cautioned, it's insanity to keep doing the same thing and expect different results. You know things have to change. Business as usual is a guarantee to fail. Your boss supports you, but is fairly lukewarm about resources and time commitments. Your staff agrees but then claim they are too busy. Activity traps, inertia, disinterest, ambivalence, fear? people fabricate (consciously or unconsciously) lots of reasons to avoid making change. This is a frequent organizational dilemma: a needed change stalls before you even get started.
Creative Marketing: Just Your Style
You've enlisted some of the traditional marketing
methods to sell your services: you received some
publicity in your local paper; your website is up and
running; and you're listed in the Yellow Pages. So
why isn't the phone ringing off the hook? Maybe
you're marketing strategies need to get more creative!
Cave Paintings, Baseball and Connecting
There's no such thing as a captive audience--any of us can tune out at will. It may
surprise you, then, to know that keeping people's attention in this high-tech age
takes the same know-how we had in neolithic days.
A Point in Every Direction is the Same As No Point At All
Ever try to be something for everyone and find no one wants it? Do you have trouble
finding the time to focus on your business? Do you do so much for so many that
you find it's difficult to make any financial progress in your business; much less
make an indelible mark in the mind of your potential customers? I found myself on
that road so many times, that I could be a tour guide for Please-want-me-ville.
|