Weekly Tip
Effective Marketing Strategies
By Leslie Stevens, Eclipse Marketing
Most likely you’re revising your marketing strategy to survive in this economy. Creating an effective plan is relatively easy if you break it down into manageable sections. To get started, schedule one day you and others in your company can conduct an intense working session.
Your overall marketing plan is a roadmap that identifies for particular items: 1) the customers you want to reach, 2) how you plan to communicate with them, 3) how much it will cost and 4) how you plan to implement. Below are ten steps that will help you create a successful marketing campaign.
1. Identify your target market – For the most part you know who your customers are. However, if you’re like most companies, you are expanding into new channels. However reaching out to everyone won’t necessarily generate increased bottom line profit. You need to clearly identify specific target markets will give you the largest return on investment.
2. Plan your referral strategy - Most of your business comes from referrals. Ironically enough, most companies don’t have a referral strategy in place. You need a plan and implement a referral strategy to continue generating referrals.
3. Determine how to generate repeat business – Existing customers are a great source for additional revenue. They are easy to reach and understand the value of your services. Develop a strategy to encourage them to upgrade their current system.
4. Decide how to stimulate new business – New business comes from customers you’ve never done any business with before. You have to find these customers through outreach marketing efforts. These customers are the most costly to acquire. However they are critical to your longevity because you never know what can happen to your referring clients and existing customers.
5. Calculate your marketing budget – Before you decide what marketing campaigns to implement, you need to know how much money you have to spend. Most integrators, on the average, spend about 3% - 5% of their sales on marketing. You need to decide what items will go into your marketing bucket.
6. Identify your marketing material and campaigns – Determine what marketing tools (e.g. brochures, website, advertisements, etc.) that you need to develop in order to reach your new and existing customers. Determine how you can use those tools to collectively leverage your marketing dollars. Simply put, determine an integrated marketing campaign to generate business from referrals, repeat customers and new business.
7. Create a Calendar of Events - Decide when you are going to create each marketing material, tool and/or campaign. This includes when you need to start developing your campaign and when you expect to complete it by. Your marketing activities might be driven by local events that you plan to attend or your sales department’s need for collateral.
8. Assign responsibilities – No matter if you are a small or medium size operation, you will most likely need assistance in developing tools and material. Determine who is accountable for creating, implementing and managing specific marketing elements no matter if you do in-house or farm out. Don’t spend your valuable time bogged down with unprofitable tasks that someone else can do for you while you focus on sales.
9. Plan meetings – Schedule regular meetings to review your marketing strategy. Keep an eye on who’s doing what and make sure everyone is working together for a consistent message.
10. Measure you ROI – Not all marketing campaigns are created equally. A marketing campaign that works well for one company might not work well for your company. Develop a strategy to determine which campaign has the highest return on investment for your specific business.
This article is provided courtesy Eclipse Marketing. Eclipse Marketing provides CEDIA members with pre-designed and affordable marketing tools and material. All material is modified for each company. Members are entitled to special discounts. To learn more about affordable marketing tools visit www.eclipsemarketing.net or call 949.363.5340. E-mail info@eclipsemarketing.net
