Myth no 97 - there's a secret way to find new customers (that only marketers know about)

If you've ever been told this by a "marketer" then you've got more chance of a money back guarantee from the gentlemen in the picture!

Marketing is not an exact science - anybody claiming to have a magic bullet is either lying or is deluded.

There are just too many variables to consider to get a marketing campaign right first time.

Variables such as:

1. Target audience - the clearer the better.
2. Sales copy - is it interesting/relevant/engaging?
3. Content you have available to send to prospects - links, documents, etc? Again, are they interesting/relevant/engaging?
4. Your chosen vehicle for reaching them - no point looking for engineers on Instagram or teenagers interested in floral designs on LinkedIn. You need the right tool/platform for the job.
5. Your reputation - reviews from satisfied customers, etc. People need to "know you, like you, trust you before they will engage with you as a prospect or customer.
6. External factors - such as summer time ("nobody's around in August"), Christmas, energy crisis, Ukraine war, etc.

All of these factors can affect the outcome of a marketing campaign.

SO HOW DO YOU CREATE A SUCCESSFUL MARKETING CAMPAIGN?

START WITH YOUR BEST GUESS - after identifying your target audience and the content you have to offer, the most important thing to do is GET STARTED.

Start sending messages, sharing content or whatever format the marketing campaign takes.

MEASURE RESULTS - give it a couple of weeks and see how things are going. Here are a few things you can measure in a typical LinkedIn marketing campaign (some may apply or be different for Facebook/Instagram/Twitter, etc).

• Number of messages sent
• Number of profile views - has this increased since the campaign started, are most of the viewers part of the target audience of the campaign?
• Number of content views - impressions, likes and comments on your LinkedIn feed and also number of link clicks via LinkedIn messaging. You can use a free tool called bit.ly to create shortened links and show you how many people have clicked and when:

• Number of new enquiries.
• Number of new sales.

When you MEASURE your results, patterns start to emerge. For example, if you make 1 sales every 100 messages sent and the sale value is ￡500, you then have a pretty good idea what you need to do to make 5 sales.

Similarly, if you contact 100 people with a personalised message and nobody clicks on the content link, it's telling you:

1. You have the wrong message - not relevant/engaging enough.
2. You have the wrong target audience.
3. You have a tough market to crack.

On point 3, let me share a couple scenarios from two of our clients:

COMPANY A - sells print management solutions to private schools. Not glamorous, very difficult to penetrate this kind of market.

In 12 months, we've had ONE enquiry! The client is happy with the progress because they know they have a 50/50 chance of closing the deal with a sale value of around ￡200k.

Assuming this level of performance continues, COMPANY A are looking at:

Marketing spend: ￡10,000

Sales made: ￡100,000

COMPANY B - a recruitment agency. We have had about 100 enquiries and ONE sale with a value of ￡12k in the first month.

So COMPANY B are looking at:

Marketing spend: ￡1,000

Sales made: ￡12,000

The important thing is to get as much information from your marketing campaign as possible.

MID-COURSE CORRECT

Make changes based on what the data is telling you. Do this as much as you need until you get a campaign that works.

So when the marketing guru tells you there's a secret way to get customers, this is what they mean!

One final thing - this takes TIME! It varies for each type of business, but I would say typically THREE MONTHS to start getting meaningful results.

MY LATEST MARKETING EXPERIMENT

With the summer holidays, nobody want to attend a face to face workshop! So I hit on the ideal of putting together a "summer holidays" workshop - one hour on a Monday morning for 3 sessions. If you're interested in joining us and learning how to set up your own LinkedIn campaign, you can register here.