Marketing Tips

As budgets get squeezed, individuals and businesses will cut back on luxuries. But basic needs must be met. Plus, some will substitute smaller-scale, less expensive luxuries. What does this mean? Some products and services will actually thrive and grow in a tight economy. Understanding what opportunities this presents to you involves knowing your customers and their needs; logically working through their dilemma of reduce spending and lower budgets; and accurately hypothesizing which substitutes will attract more dollars. At the end of that process you will have a list of potential marketing responses to the weak economy.

Are you selling customers what they want or what you think they want?  Communicating with your customers is an amazingly simple and effective way to keep your finger on the pulse of your customers needs.

Your customer communication plan is extremely important and should be as personalized as possible.  Figure out how each customer likes to be communicated to and you can eliminate unnecessary and costly communications.  Also, a healthy mix of useful content will keep them opening your messages

Website analytics software has become increasingly popular, but it is easy for a business to become overwhelmed by the amount of data.  This can lead to the software going unused or misused.  Make sure you start with the most important metrics and move into more detail as you become more comfortable with the data.

How clean is your data?  Having clean customer data can mean the difference between success or failure in a marketing campaign.  Every company should have an on-going process in place for keeping their data clean.

E-mail continues to grow in importance as part of the marketing mix.  Make sure you put as much time into crafting your e-mail campaigns and segmenting your e-mail list as you would on the direct mail side.  The price of irrelevance will be a high unsubscribe rate and a reduction in your e-mail list size.

A great technique for heading off the endless wasted hours working on trivial things is to give yourself a limited amount of time to complete any given task. Decide how much you want to spend on a certain project, and then STICK to those limits. Be firm! This will keep you from burning up an entire day hunting for that "perfect" image you want to add to your site, when you could have been doing something with that time to complete tasks that would add considerably more value to your business.

According to market research from the Gartner Group, more than 50% of web sales are LOST because visitors can't find what they're looking for! Don't make that mistake. * Name your navigation buttons clearly so it's obvious what people will find when they click on them. * Keep your navigation simple and consistent throughout your site, so people don't have to click any more than necessary. Ideally, someone should be able to buy from you in two clicks at most. * Use ""Buy Now"" buttons that link to your shopping cart or order page every time a product is shown-- especially if you have a catalog site.

Always take the best seat! One well-known executive and best-selling author suggests the following: If you take a customer or prospect to breakfast, lunch or dinner, always take the best seat. Your back should be facing the wall. This way your client will not be distracted by all the people walking in and out of the restaurant. Your client will be focused on YOU.

Continually split-test your sales page(s). Change a single element (headline color, for example) and test against the current version. Replace anytime you get a page that converts better than the current - Over time, this dramatically improves profit.

Don't optimize for a single keyword, optimize for a keyword phrase. When you optimize for a single keyword, more often than not, that word is highly competitive and your chances of coming out on top are minimal. Where you gain a significant advantage is by focusing on a keyword phrase. This actually increases your chances of ranking well and helps you towards ranking well on all major search engines for the single word you originally chose as your ideal keyword.

Don't take this the wrong way, but every company wastes marketing dollars. Unless you are getting a 100% response to your promotions, you should continue to look for ways to segment and analyze your campaigns. Take some time to explore all of the tools available and make sure to find the best fit with your analytics needs.

Effective direct marketing campaigns should always be measurable, so you can make business decisions based on results, rather than opinions. Keep in mind that the best-looking marketing campaigns are not always the most responsive.

Get to know your customers! This seems so fundamental, but is often times overlooked as part of the marketing function. What do they like most about your product? Least? How do they prefer to buy? Shop...? The more information you are armed with, the better you will be able to meet their needs.

In direct marketing, experts say that results are 40% dependant on your list, 40% on the offer, and 20% on your creative. The same is true for internet marketing, search engine marketing, and the like. Test your offers and find the one that out performs all the others. This offer should continually be tested and refined to improve your results.