Better Marketing Results

In my experience as a marketing consulting with business owners I have found that the following traits are characteristics of successful business owners along with a profound view that they have ownership and are accountable for their own success.

• Planning
• Systemise
• Test & Measure
• Watch Competition
• Focused Marketing
• Engage with Stakeholders
• Persistence and Perseverance
• Cash is King
• Entrust your Staff
• Keep it All Together
• Look after Yourself
• Dedication and Passion

What do you think? As a business owner how many of these characteristics are in your profile?  What have you identified as an area for development and what are you going to do about it?

I recommend that business owners read the post at MarketingProfs.com titled "Five Key Assets of a Good Social Community Manager" (http://www.marketingprofs.com/short-articles/2179/five-key-assets-of-a-good-social-community-manager) as the article has the business viewpoint for management of your social media channels.

The individual does not necessarily need to be part of your own organization or staff and they can be outsourced as long as they apply the approach mentioned in the article plus an appreciation of the promotional impact they may have with their actions on the business.

Many businesses neglect this very valuable asset - your own in-house database. Why? Most think it is too time-consuming to keep updated or simple fail to realize the potential goldmine from using and maintaining their database.

You may have heard of the marketing phrase “Content is King”, however, you may not have heard that the “Database is Queen”!

Your database must be viewed as a valuable resource asset. It is a potent source for marketing intelligence and a powerful tool for building relevance while nurturing relationships.

To make the most from your database you must be able to answer these five questions:

1. What is your database objective?
2. What information is available?
3. How can the information be captured?
4. How can you use the information?
5. What is the best way to segment your database?

What do you think? Have any of you taken the time to segment your database to achieve better marketing results?

View my presentation titled "Why your database should be your best friend" at the recent Email Marketing Summit Australia EMSA 2010 held at the Art Gallery of NSW in Sydney.

We can easily observe that people love and are incredibly engaged with interesting web videos.

We can harness the exceptional persuasive power of videos with video that is benefit-oriented and with real entertainment value.

Web video that is entertaining and relevant to the audience is most likely to be shared with their own network of business colleagues and friends using social media like FaceBook and Twitter.

What is your view and your own experiences with using video to engage with your own audience?

You would have heard so many marketing experts telling everyone to use social media as part of their promotional marketing mix. The Internet is flooded with information on using FaceBook, Twitter and other social media sites.  Numerous articles have been written on how using social media can help promote your brand image and how it can generate web traffic for your main business website.

Keep in mind that that social media is a marketing tool and it is only effective when used properly to promote your business. The key question for a business is “How is social media harnessed to generate real revenue and customers?”

Here are the 7 Business Development Marketing Tips for using Social Media: [Read complete article]

1. Go where your customers are and not where you are comfortable
2. Engage and interact
3. Research your competitors’ activities
4. Release offers and programs that are exclusive to your social media channels
5. Social media participation requires authenticity and transparency
6. Look for value opportunities in selling through social media
7. Always test and refine based on results generated

Social media programs as a marketing channel are not exempt from testing and refining your messages and offers. You must make the effort to test, gather results and analyse how it can be improved before launching the program to the entire channel.

Apply these 7 Marketing Tips for using Social Media to give you the foundation for success building and growing your business using these communication channels.

I am sure many others can add to this list, share with us your own successes using social media!

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!

As a business owner or manager you are always on the lookout for ways to improve your business performance. We recognise that achieving Better Marketing Results is working smarter and making your marketing work harder for you and not the other way around.

What are your experiences with?

1. Marketing above the prospecting funnel to generated qualified sales opportunities and new orders for the business.
2. Marketing below the prospecting funnel to generate repeat business opportunities and additional orders for your business.

What works  and what has not worked?

Whatever industry you are in you are likely to encounter the top 6 marketing challenges for small businesses.   As a small business what can you do?   We will have a limited war chest of marketing dollars or even marketing staff at our disposal to tame these challenges. How can we conquer the top 6 small business marketing challenges?

1. Defining Target Markets
2. Increasing Repeat Business
3. Getting Consistent Referrals
4. Increasing Sales Conversions
5. Finding Time & Resources for Marketing
6. Developing a Marketing Plan

Please share with us your own experiences in handling these top 6 small business marketing challenges.

Read the complete article titled "Conquer the Top 6 Small Business Marketing Challenges".