IS YOUR MARKETING WORKING FOR YOU?

What do you want most as a Business Owner? Sales/Orders/Bookings – that’s what pays the bills.

And if you’re not selling, you need to be Marketing. The purpose of marketing is to build a database so you can start talking to an audience and then get to a point where you can discuss working together – the quote/pitch/presentation.

So how’s your marketing working for you right now? Is it attracting the type of customers you want who are prepared to pay what you want to charge?

If it is, brilliant and well done. If it’s not, then some questions for you about your marketing –

• How much time do you spend Marketing?
• Do you have a Marketing budget?
• If you don’t, how much money do you spend on marketing from month to month?
• Do you track where your leads come from?

If you don’t know the answers to those questions, then what might be the benefit of knowing those answers?

As a marketing strategy, being all things to all people in your marketing DOES NOT WORK. It’s like chucking mud at a wall and hoping some of it will stick so let’s get smart. Accountants report marketing as an expense but you want to see it as an investment i.e you get more income back than you spend on marketing. Can you say that right now?

Here are 5 tips for you to improve the return you get on your marketing.

1. Be crystal clear on your target audience – as Allan Dib states in his book “The One Page Marketing Plan”, aim 100 arrows at the same target not 1 arrow at 100 different targets.
2. Get your marketing to talk about how you solve customers’ problems rather than ‘bore’ them with a list of what you do. What’s in it for them?
3. If you measure how much time you spend per week marketing, you’ll immediate recognise whether that’s enough – do you need to be doing more?
4. Do the marketing you enjoy doing the most – just because someone else does cold-calling successfully for example, that may not work for you because of your current skill level or discomfort doing it. You can always delegate it but take care over who you appoint – you’re paying them for results!
5. Set a budget, however small, and test and measure several strategies until you know whether they work or not. For example, if your budget is ￡100 per month allocate ￡10 to ten strategies and then see how many leads and what quality of leads you get from each of them. Once you have sufficient data, you can reallocate your marketing spend accordingly.

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Finding the right marketing strategy will take time so you can’t turn it off like a tap. Follow these principles consistently for the strategies you have selected until you know for sure whether they work or not, and keep asking yourself the question “am I getting a return on my investment in marketing?” If not, change the strategy!!!