Better Marketing Results

Many of you will have read or heard of this quote before by Chris Grosser "Opportunities don't happen. You create them".

In your own business have you developed a process to develop opportunities and drive prospects to your sales funnel?

How are you using marketing to develop your business opportunities? Are you using Direct Response Marketing effectively?

Read our previous blog post at https://www.pmzmarketing.com.au/better-marketing-results/direct-response-marketing for information (Direct Response Marketing).

 If you need assistance with your marketing efforts, Contact Us - PMZ Marketing is Better Marketing Results

A recent presentation on Direct Response Marketing is available at our Marketing Seminar Presentations page.

It is my view and experience that the best marketing technique to drive new business development is direct response marketing!

What is direct response marketing? It is a marketing technique designed to generate immediate business results from a promotional offer.You can read my article about using AIDA (Attract, Interest, Desire, Action) to help you prepare your promotional offer from our many articles at our Marketing Resource Library.

Your promotional marketing message or direct response offer will have the following attributes:

• Creative - to ensure that your marketing information will stand out from the crowd and draw the recipient to read or view your promotional offer immediately
• Target Market - is a highly focused and targeted selection of prospective customers for your marketing message offer
• Content - utilise an emotive personalised and relevant marketing message that will resonant with the recipient, it must have a compelling and powerful offer with a 'call to action' framed with scarcity or a limited time frame to drive the response

Over the years, my clients and I have successfully used direct response marketing techniques using the following communication channels:

• Postal Mail
• Email Marketing
• Social Media
• Leveraged Personal Selling
• Cross/Multi-Media

I am interested in hearing from you on your own direct response marketing results, what has your experience been in using direct response marketing techniques?

Please share with us and join the discussion.

For those of you in the retail business here are the key dates to plan for your marketing and sales campaigns.

• Late January & early February - Back to School
• 14th February - Valentine's Day
• 25th - 28th March - Easter
• 8th May - Mother's Day
• 17th May - Click Frenzy
• Last week of June - EoFY
• 4th September - Father's Day
• 31st October - Halloween
• 1st November - Melbourne Cup Day
• 11th November - Singles Day
• 25th November - Black Friday (following Thanksgiving Day in the USA)
• 28th November - Cyber Monday (Monday after Thanksgiving Day in the USA)
• 25th December - Christmas
• 26th December - Boxing Day Sales

In the lead up to these dates you should be developing your marketing campaigns to drive sales traffic to your web stores.

As always, PMZ Marketing is here to help with anything you need.

Better Marketing Results – Patrick Zuluaga

PS> Signup for your FREE 30-day eMail Marketing offer at www.pmzmarketing.com.au/free-email-marketing-trial-offer-mobile

I thought I should share this with you all. It is an American based infographic from Monetate (www.monetate.com), however the information is relevant to businesses here that have both a physical 'brick & mortar' retail shop and a online web store.  I find that most retail businesses that have this scenario have yet to take advantage of the all powerful mobile device and how it is now driving their purchase options and actions.  Why do you think this is the case?

Monetate Marketing Infographics

Did you know that more often it is the things that you may not be doing that will have a much greater impact on your business growth than those that you do? These are areas that I have found as a business consultant as the most prevalent in holding back the growth of small companies:

• Understanding your Customer Market
• Adequate Planning
• Managing Cash Flow
• Operating a Marketing and Sales Development Process
• Targeted Marketing Campaigns and Programs

What do you think? In your own business situation have you faced these issues or other more significant challenges? Share with us your views and expereinces.

[Read the complete article]

At a recent small networking business group (SBNG) breakfast meeting, we discussed the challenges in marketing and what were their successful experiences in reach out to their target markets.  Here is the list complied from the meeting:

• Face to Face meetings (Personal Networking & Selling)
• Understanding exactly who is your target market/customer (targeting potential customers)
• Using a system to generate a prospecting funnel and manage the conversion process
• Testing marketing first before bulk roll-out of the campaign
• Having the right attitude toward communications with your prospective customers - helping instead of selling
• Target your own customer database using RFM segmentation (define)
• Market & sell your benefits not features (how) or use an Objectives-Benefits-Features (define) chart
• Use marketing mediums that your customers use not what you are comfortable with.

What did you think? What is your own experiences with successful marketing?

Many businesses focus all their marketing efforts in generating new customer leads while at the same time neglecting the potential gold mine that exist with their current customers! Your promotional marketing plan should always include targeting your most desirable customers with relevant and timely offers.

To identify your most desirable customers I recommend you utilise the Recency-Frequency-Monetary (RFM) segmentation method.

The RFM segmentation analysis method will identify your most desirable customers from your current customers using three different lists, namely;

1. Recency – to determine the time frame of orders from the date of your analysis. Your generated list must sort by the most recent orders first as your priority target.
2. Frequency – to determine the number of orders that customers placed with your business. Your generated list must sort by the most number of individual order transactions in descending order.
3. Monetary – to determine the total monetary value of orders placed on your business by your customers. Your generated list must sort from the highest total value to the lowest total order value.

Next, from these three lists select the top 20% in each of these lists.  These will represent your most desirable customers who are potentially most inclined to act on a relevant and compelling offer from your business.

Let us know what results you have achieved!

You most likely will have heard this before “businesses that fails to plan, plans to fail”.

It is a simple truth – you need to know where you are going to get there!

Small business owners must recognise that marketing planning is essential to achieving their company’s full potential for success. I am not talking about a huge document that sits in the desk drawer never to be taken out again once it has been prepared.

In small business, you need a practical and concise document that you can refer to regularly. It should not be more than two to three pages long because you need to post it in front of your work space where you can see it and refer to it frequently.

How can you put together such a marketing plan?

Here’s how to build your small business marketing plan:

1. Define and list your top three marketing objectives
2. Formulate your marketing strategies for your target markets
3. Identify the marketing programs needed to implement your strategies
4. Outline how you will track and measure your marketing results
5. Create a marketing calendar

The question is - as a small business owner what support would you need to be able to prepare such a plan? or from your experience as a small business owner can you do it yourself? or perhaps you feel you can do without a plan?

What do you think? Let us know your views and comments!