I hate to be the voice of doom and gloom, but I have to tell you that I’m concerned that online marketing is so easy to do, that most people are leaving out a critical component.
And if you don’t have this component built into all your marketing, you’re losing out on a lot of additional sales you could be making.
So what is this all important component I’m talking about?
It’s accountability.
You see, in the old days of direct marketing before the Internet, you paid through the nose to test most forms of marketing. Space ads, post cards, direct mail, radio and television were (and still are) expensive to use.
So much more effort was put into getting it right. And every marketing campaign was measured and held accountable.
If a postcard mailing didn’t beat your previously best performing postcard, then it was either modified and tested again or sent to the trash.
But these days, because clicks are so cheap, people don’t seem to hold their marketing accountable anymore.
For example, it’s been proven that a customer who has bought something from you is 5 to 10 times more valuable – and easier to sell other things to – than a prospect who hasn’t bought from you.
Yet when I ask most new clients how many people on their list are prospects and how many are customers, they usually have no idea.
They also don’t know who their “multi-buyers” are. By this, I mean people who have bought more than one of your products or services and are by far the “golden” portion of your list. These multi-buyers should be marketed to differently than everyone else, given more care and attention, and treated especially well. In turn, they’ll reward you by buying even more of what you offer!
Building accountability into the key areas of your marketing
If you want to maximize your sales and profits – and do so with just a minimum amount of effort – it’s essential that you build an accountability component into all aspects of your marketing. Here are three areas where you can start.
List accountability. Start segmenting your list today. Organize your list by prospects and paying customers. Then, organize your customers by the products they’ve bought. Running a quick spread sheet against your list will show you who the multi-buyers are. Devoting more of your marketing to your existing customers and multi-buyers is a fast, certain way to increase your profits.
Campaign accountability. Measure the results of every marketing campaign you use. Did it hold up to your best campaign? If not, tweak and test again or get rid of it. Then run your most successful campaigns on a regular basis.
One of the secrets of successful marketers is that they never retire a successful campaign simply because they’re bored with it. They keep running it until it no longer performs. Plus, they never retire it completely. After taking it out of circulation for 3 to 6 months, they’ll run it again. Often it will perform just as well as it did previously.
Product accountability. Be merciless about eliminating your lowest selling products or services. By measuring the sales of each product you offer, you can quickly tell which products sell best and which don’t.
Divide your products into thirds. Each year, you should aim to cut out your underperforming products, develop more products similar to those that sell best, and replace the lowest third with new products. Just remember to hold your new products accountable – if they sell well, keep them. If not, put them out to pasture as quickly as possible.
Got a comment?
Do you agree or disagree with me? Or do you have an experience with this topic that you’d like to share? Then feel free to leave a comment below.
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A number of years ago (ok, many, many years ago, before the internet existed) I worked for a software company. Their software was sold in retail stores all over the world. Governments too bought this software. In fact I worked with one of our top programmers to solve a security problem with certain laptop computers and the US IRS bought a million dollars (wholesale value) of our software as a direct result.
But the most profitable division of the company was the direct sales department. They maintained a list of customers and frequently mailed them special offers on new products and upgrades to the latest updated versions of the software. Remember this was USPS (now better known as “snail mail”) and in those days a direct marketing mailing that got results of sales from one tenth of one percent was considered a success. If the campaign achieved one percent sales it was a runaway hit.
By targeting existing customers, our direct sales mail department had success rates in the 5% to 7% (and if I remember correctly, occasionally up to 15% on major upgrades). Knowing who your customers are is tremendously valuable.
And one more thing … don’t forget to ask your existing customers for referrals to their friends and contacts. Their personal endorsement to their own acquaintances is the best “sales tool” you have. (Although I’d also count Bob Serling as the “Swiss Army Knife” of exceptional marketing techniques.)
Sincerely,
Stafford “Doc” Williamson
http://weightloss.psyrk.us
Bob… This is a great point from you…Again!
From my software years we would improve a clients system by evaluating what we did then coming up with a new iteration of their system over and over until we delivered a truly beneficial result for them. It was a series if iterations that were tested against previous changes. And, sometimes we’d go a few steps back and recapture an idea or two.
This also worked extremely well in sales. A continual appraisal of what happened on each sales call and what could be approved served me well. My sales results … well, showed better and better results.
Your message works in many areas of business and personal life. And if you are looking for continual growth and maximized effectiveness just follow your advice and hold your marketing accountable.
Thank you for the reminder! It can be easy to focus on bringing in new business instead of focusing on what we already have and giving them more!