Do you measure effectiveness of your marketing? It’s a cliché: “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.” But clichés are clichés for a reason. And the reason is more often than not because they are true. How do you know whether something is working or whether it’s not? Can you afford to waste time on something that it isn't working? Can you afford to waste money on something that isn't working? Is there any reason to be doing things that aren't working for you? First of all, every time you do a specific marketing activity or put something in place like when you set up a Facebook … [Read more...]
Patience Is A Virtue in Marketing
It is highly important to realize that marketing takes time. Nothing happens overnight. It’s not just a question of one big ad here or there or one promoted Facebook post. People need to go through a certain process and you have to reach them a number of times before they’re going to be ready to buy from you. If you want to know more about that marketing process, check out this blog post here. According to sales guru Brian Tracy it takes five sales calls before the customer is ready to buy. Those are sales calls and a very expensive way to sell. You have an expensive employee going there … [Read more...]
The Marketing Process
It is important to understand the process your prospective customers go through before they are ready to buy from you. If you understand that process, you are better equipped to put in place marketing activities that support it, and help lead people through it and towards buying from you. The first step is for people to know you exist, so awareness is the first thing. I don’t just mean people seeing you once or twice, but actually noticing you. Actually registering that you exist. It’s pretty hard to get people to buy from you if you don’t exist, right? ;) But even if they … [Read more...]
Lead Me
For those who have been following me for a while, the marketing process is not a new concept. In another post I have talked about owning rather than renting your marketing, by using advertising and other means to get people into a marketing process where you don't have to pay each and every time you want to make contact with those people. I want to talk a bit more about how we can own our marketing, and how we can use the concept of lead management to do this. A lead is someone that has come into contact with us and is now in our marketing process. This is how I have usually portrayed … [Read more...]
Owning or Renting Your Marketing
Those that have been following me for a while might accuse me of being anti-advertising. So I want to address that today. I am not against advertising, per se. However, I want to make sure that businesses are always using the marketing activities most suited to themselves, their market and their brand, and activities that give them the best return on investment (hmmmm very much a business phrase! :) - and activities that can be measured to show that they are really delivering results and that all important ROI. Unfortunately, many of us just throw adverts out there and don't think … [Read more...]