The most overlooked elements for successful marketing
Communication With a Designed Purpose
Your existing customers are your best bet for profitable sales increases
The marketing strategies you need to grow your business and increase your profits usually are staring you in the face. I have clients who have increased awareness of their business or product from 100 - 300% using strategies we have introduced to them, so we know they work - if you are willing to put them into practice. Go to our website at www.inposition.biz and you can view some of the many clients we have consulted with over the years. Most of them were made aware of missed marketing opportunities that they were right in front of them they just didn’t know it.
One of the most overlooked elements of marketing success
Communications with your existing customers is crucial not only in keeping their business but also growing new business from the same clients. Most marketing efforts focus on acquiring only new customers. Most businesses that we have worked with miss many opportunities to maximize marketing to existing customers in order to generate more sales.
Learn how to use our 3W thinking process
Most clients that we begin to work with do not realize how they can capitalize on the relationships that they have built with their current customer base. 3W thinking starts by having our clients answer these three initial questions:
What do you have to offer your existing customers?
When did you last let them know?
What are you not offering existing customers that you could be offering them?
Then we follow up with the next set of 3 questions
When did you last send a letter to your customers?
When did you last email them? Did you measure the response?
When did you last call them? What would happen if you doubled your contact with them?
We need more business.
One of our recent clients just purchased another company and was looking for exposure to new customers to grow their business quickly. They were handicapped because of all the expenses in buying the new business and hiring new employees. The new owners were looking at a very small marketing budget for their first year. The question was posed to us how do we get more customers with little or no advertising dollars to spend?
What do we do?
We immediately asked for all the existing customer contact information that they had, addresses, emails, invoices, sales information anything with customer contact information. We then cleaned up all the lists imported them all into the same database, a database that could be centralized and used by all sales personnel. We then started freshening up their website to include all the new features that they can offer to new and existing customers. While all this was in process we were actively engaged in a public awareness campaign that would target the customer demographics we knew would be interested in what was being sold by the new company. Because their business model was somewhat complicated print seemed the best choice to showcase their business and give it the proper exposure it needed. Once we had landed feature stories in the local newspaper and regional magazines we coincided a well crafted micro segmented email campaign to existing customers telling them all the new things that they can expect from the “revamped” business model. The e-mail included links to the featured stories as well as the now re-vamped web site.
Marketing Campaign Budget of $10,000
Produced These Results:
• $35,000 of free print advertising exposure to targeted audience
• Revamped web site
• Branded email template
• Targeted email campaign producing 70% response rate
• Trade magazine ads
• Clean and updated data base for future mailings.
For under $10,000 dollars this client was up and running and then some. For us this is not an unusual story. We did it this (and a lot more) and it generated a fortune of business for our client.
Here are some more useful 3W questions:
How often do you communicate with customers by direct mail?
E-mail?
Do you test and measure the responses?
Do you spend time thinking of exclusive offers you can make to your existing customers?
Have you ever surveyed your customers, asking them what they like? What they want?
Do you say 'thank you' to your customers either by letter, email or telephone?
Do you ask your customers for referrals?
Did you know ways of getting referrals?
Do you know of products or services that your customers could benefit from?
There are hundreds of great marketing strategies for getting new customers. But before that, you need to nurture your relationships with your existing customers.
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