Dramatically Improve Your Marketing Results With These 6 Simple Steps

What if there were a few simple things you could do right now that could help you to market more successfully in the future? Even if you didn’t have your marketing act together over the past year. Well, there are.

Keywords:

marketing effectiveness, marketing results, marketing plan, marketing

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What if there were things you could start doing now that could help you to market more successfully in the future? Even if you didn’t have your marketing act together over the past year. Well, there are.

(1) Review your past marketing activities and results

Take some time to review all of your marketing activities and try to understand which ones worked best. And when I say “worked best” I mean, which ones resulted in more clients, more customers, more sales, or more growth for your business?

Your goal each year should be to understand which marketing activities bring you more business and which ones do not, so you can concentrate on the activities that work, and delete the ones that do not. Even if you did not have an organized marketing plan, or marketing activities that you implemented consistently during the past year, if you are still in business today, then there must have been some form of marketing going on.

(2) Broaden your definition of marketing

Marketing isn’t only things like running an advertisement, or sending out a direct mail piece. It's anything you do that puts your business, product or service in front of the prospects you are trying to sell to.

You may be surprised to realize you’ve been marketing more than you know!

Any time you talk to someone about your business, product or service, in person, at an event, over the phone, or through a brochure or some form of media, you are marketing. Any time you send someone an email or a thank you card from your business, you are marketing.

Be aware of any time you are communicating with current customers, or potential customers. Take the opportunity to make them aware of new products or services, special offers or programs, or even milestones or changes in your business.

Do you include your business card every time you mail a letter to a client or prospect? Do you have an email signature that includes your business name, your phone number, your email address, your website address and possibly even your tagline? You should. You are reminding people about your products and services and making it easy for them to find out more if they so choose.

If you truly believe that your products or services can enhance people’s lives, then it should be easy to share the word at every opportunity. After all, if people don’t know about you, they can’t benefit. Put this way, it is almost a disservice to NOT market.

(3) See if you can track your sales to your marketing, either directly or indirectly

Take a look at the marketing you did do, taking into consideration all of the activities mentioned above. Can you directly or indirectly track any new or increased business to these activities? An example of direct tracking might be: You attended a networking event and someone you gave your business card to, contacted you or made a purchase.

An example of indirect tracking might be: You attended a networking event, and someone you gave your business card to, referred you to a friend, and that friend contacted you or made a purchase. For each marketing activity you did over the past year, ask yourself the following questions:

(a) Did I get any new clients, customers or increased sales as a direct result, or an indirect result, of this activity?

(b) If the answer is yes, quantify the result by asking yourself: How many new clients, customers or sales did it generate?

If you can't seem to track your past marketing activities, consider asking your current customers how they found out about you.

You could do a survey that includes a number of customer satisfaction questions, but also includes a question to determine how they found out about you.

If you have a handful of clients that you work closely with and you really don’t know how they found you, pick up the phone and ask them.

At the end of this exercise, you will have a list of all of your marketing activities, and the results connected to each one.

(4) Separate those activities that resulted in business from those that did not

Are there any activities on your list that did not result in new or additional business? If you gave these activities a good opportunity to bring you business, then maybe it's time to consider dropping these activities and trying some new ones. After all, there is no sense continuing to spend money on marketing that has not proven to be effective for your business. Even if it has worked for someone else, it may not be a good marketing activity for you and your business.

(5) Use this information to plan your marketing for next year

Plan to spend more time, energy and/or money on those activities that brought you business and sales. These activities have proven themselves to be effective for your business, product or service. So odds are if you commit more to them, they will result in even more sales. And, if you really don’t have any way to track your sales or new clients, don’t beat yourself up. You are not alone. In fact, one of my biggest challenges as a marketing consultant has been to get my clients to track the effectiveness of their various marketing activities. Just make sure to remedy this now, once and for all. Commit to never implementing a marketing activity again without some way to track how effective it is.

(6) Set up a way to track all future marketing activities

Recognize the importance of tracking and make sure that you have a plan in place to track all of your future marketing activities. The simplest way to track is to simply ask each new customer where or how they found out about you. You may also want to consider including a code on any flyers or brochures that you distribute, and providing a reason for the customer to bring that flyer in when they come to make a purchase. Reasons to return the flyer could be to take advantage of a special offer, or to get a discount or free bonus gift.

You can also do this by phone or on the Internet if that is how your customers make purchases. Simply ask them to provide you with the code on the brochure or flyer that they are calling or ordering from. Make sure the code is specific to the location or group of people that you distributed the flyer to. If you are networking or speaking to a group and someone gives you their business card and agrees to receive your free report or e-newsletter, make sure you include a reference in your contact database of the event where you met them. For every marketing activity you do put a plan in place to help you track all them. Effective tracking is by far one of the easiest ways to improve your marketing effectiveness. And when you zero-in on what marketing activities are most effective for your business, you will be able to focus your efforts on only those activities, and will be able to spend less and get more as a result.

(C) 2005 Debbie LaChusa

Dramatically Increase your sales with these tips

Everyone can use more sales right? It has been proven that you can develop and run a successful business on the Internet if you apply certain principals.

Keywords:

business, internet marketing

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If your are just starting a business venture then the following tips will provide you with a solid foundation for growing your new company and if you have been in business for a while you can use these tips as a supplement to your existing marketing strategies.

The results of the following tips may vary based upon your dedication to applying these tips on a daily basis.


1. Sign-up to win web site awards. When you win, some award sites publish your web site link, name and description on their site.


2. Join online business associations or clubs. If you join, they will usually list all their members on their web site. It will give your business extra exposure.


3. Utilize a simple form of viral marketing. Write or have someone else write a small report with your ad included on it and allow others to give it away.


4. Improve your business by promoting customer feedback. Tell them you want their honest opinions about your business, good or bad.


5. Design your packaging so it sells your products. Utilize colors and lettering that make your product more attractive to your prospects.


6. Compare your product's guarantee to your main competitors. Find a niche were your can design your guarantee to be more powerful.


7. Try not to assume your audience understands everything in your ad copy. If you have words they may not know the meaning to, define them.


8. Build alliances with other online businesses. You could trade links or ads, create joint venture deals; cross promote your products, etc.


9. Design your web site to be a valuable resource for people. Include original content, links to other interesting web sites, ebooks, software, etc.


10. Compete with the highly branded businesses by practicing good
customers service, strong product quality and speedy service.

Make a commitment to apply at lease one of these tips each day and you will be amazed by the results.

Dramatically Increase Qualified Leads With Qualified Promotional Gifts

There may not be a lot you can do about past promotional products that ended up losing or even costing you money, but you can guarantee that you never again lose money on promotional items that fail miserably.

Keywords:

promotional gifts, promotionsl items, promotional products

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Are you sitting at your desk, scratching your head and wondering why you just spent a gazillion dollars on a marketing promotion that brought you exactly zero return on your investment? Do you still have boxes and boxes of those pens you thought would have your phone ringing off the hook, sitting in your storage room or warehouse, lonely because no one wants to take them home?

Don't freak out. There may not be a lot you can do about past promotional products that ended up losing or even costing you money, but you can guarantee that you never again lose money on promotional items that fail miserably.

How? Well, see, it's all the idea behind the promotional item. Many business owners make the mistake of thinking if they stick their logo on a cheap or even very nice pen or magnet, their bottom lines will instantly rise.

It takes more than that for promotional items to work. It takes some thought and planning on your part for them to stand a fighting chance in this extremely cluttered marketing and advertising arena. Yep, it takes knowing two things: 1) What message do you want the promotional item to convey, and 2) What action do you want the customer to take.

Unless you know these two things and work them clearly into your promotional items, even the cleverest promotional product will fail. People may get a nice pen or refrigerator magnet, or even something unique, from you, but unless it has a message and spurs your clients to take action of some kind, the pen will get stuck in a drawer or lost, and the magnet will get stuck on the refrigerator and forgotten until it's needed to stick up a grocery list.

Pens and magnets are great for branding your company, but they rarely make anyone want to use a company's services. At best, in an emergency, because your number just happens to be on their desk or refrigerator, you'll get a call-and a sale.

That's because other than presenting your logo, name, address and phone number, they don't have a clear message. The promotional item may even say you're the best widget maker in the USA, but so do a zillion other pens and magnets and notepads out there. But they don't give anyone a reason to use your company's product or service. And even your promotional ideas have to connect to your customers' needs for them to take action of any kind. People need a reason or benefit to make them take action.

So get your message and call to action clear in your mind, then choose a promotional item that gets those two things across to your customers-and you'll have promotional items that are hands-down winners every time.