2)
Ask your clients. Check to find out where they heard of you. Most
businesses never ask this question and miss out on gleaning valuable
insights into how clients select a service provider.
3) Does your advertising and/or promotional activity produce direct
responses?It should. If your answer is "I don't know" then you've
got some work to do. In addition to 2) above, there are some things
you can do to improve response rates.
Firstly, make sure you are advertising in the right media. Choose
media to suit your selected audience. Be as specific as possible.
And avoid rejecting options just because they don't look "exciting",
such as trade journals that might have relatively small readership.
Importantly, check with your audience to make sure they actually
do read the publication.
Use a strong headline that asks a pertinent question, or gives
a solution-oriented statement.
Include a clear call-to-action. Tell people what they should
do. For example: Ring today for your free appointment; Ask for our
free information sheet.
Include multiple methods of contact. Phone, email, and web site
are all important. Give prospects a choice of how to contact you.
4) Do your networking activities create new opportunities for you?
One of the major principles of effective networking is to "give"
rather than "sell". That is, you should look to help others as you
spread word about your services. But this softly, softly approach
can make it hard to measure effectiveness.
To measure your networking activities make sure you track the source
of incoming enquiries. Then see if any of your visible/tangible tactics
can be credited with generating the enquiry. If not, then maybe you
can safely say it was a referral generated by networking. This is
made a lot easier if you're a member of a lead-generating club such
as BNI or Leads. You'll get specific feedback each week from these
groups.
5) Do your marketing tactics make it easier to sell your services?
To do this your marketing activities and/or material should do
the following:
Attract qualified prospects (who have shown a specific interest
in your services).
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Anticipate and diffuse potential questions/concerns from prospects.
Be easy to use when personally selling to prospects. For example:
material should be relevant; images/charts easy to understand; and
be presented in a format the prospect will be likely to keep.
Focus on your client needs and your points of difference
(Unique Selling Proposition).
6) Check your sales conversion rate. The best approach here
is to look at your historical records and determine whether your conversion
(or closure) rate has improved. "Selling" is an important part of
the "marketing" function, so make sure you assess your success at
closing the sale, rather than just focus on generating new leads.
7) Does your plan have a positive return on investment (ROI)? Does
it bring in enough new/repeat business to justify the expense? Rather
than just look at the "marketing budget" as one total, you really
need to evaluate the cost effectiveness of each specific marketing
activity. Even if you think you're getting a great ROI overall, maybe
you can do even better by changing or eliminating unproductive tactics.
About the Author:
Stuart Ayling runs Marketing Nous, an Australasian marketing consultancy
that specialises in marketing for service businesses. He helps clients
to improve their marketing tactics, attract more clients, and increase
revenue. For additional marketing resources, including Stuart's popular
monthly newsletter, visit his web site at www.marketingnous.com.au
Read this newsletter at:
http://www.MarketingNewz.com/2004/0712.html |
|
| From
the Forum: |
| Drive
Sales With Your Site's "Buy Funnel" |
| WebProNews focuses a great deal on how to get
people to your site, but that's really only part of the "getting
paid" equation. Michael Grover of CMP noted that redesigned
landing pages for ads have been measured to bring in 400% improvements
on return. If you're optimizing the pages on your site for different
keywords have you analyzed those pages and rebuilt them based
on what actions you want visitors to take on that page? ...
|
 |
By
Stuart Ayling