When you put an ad in a magazine, send out a sales letter, or
put up a web site, you want results. You want your prospects to
contact you and to buy from you; you hope to get a flood of
calls and sales.
If your marketing isn't generating the results you want, then
it's time to change your marketing strategy! Don't expect to
improve your results using the same strategy.
Here's an example. A search engine positioning firm I work with
was having trouble generating leads. Yes, in spite of their
superior ability to put their site at the top of the search
engine listings and do the same for their clients, they were
hardly converting any of their site visitors into leads and then
clients. They were getting well over a thousand visitors a week
to their site and generating at best a single inquiry per week.
Think about this for a minute. Most people assume that getting
your web site to the top of the search engine listings will
solve all their web marketing problems. The reality is that it
doesn't matter how many visitors you get to your web site (or
how many s.ales letters you send or ads you place,) if you
aren't generating leads and converting them to sales.
The search engine positioning firm I was working with has many
satisfied national clients, are highly skilled and great people
to work with, but their marketing strategy was broken. Their
website looked very similar to their competitors' sites. In
fact, with a lot of information about what they do and who they
are, it read like a blend of the information found on websites
of other firms who offer similar services.
Many small business owners look at their competitors' marketing
materials and cobble together the information for their own
pieces based on what they see. The problem with this approach is
that they are copying a strategy that isn't working for someone
else. Once they publish their materials, someone else copies the
same stuff and tries to make it work. Know anyone who has done
this?
Nine times out of ten, marketing materials put together in this
way lead with the company name and then list services or
features. I can guarantee that if you are using this approach to
marketing your business, you're not happy. This marketing
strategy doesn't work.
Is your marketing working? Ask yourself the following questions:
- How many leads did my web site generate relative to the number
of visitors it gets?
- How many leads did my ad generate relative to the cost and
number of people who saw it?
- How many leads did my sales letter generate relative to the
number of letters I sent out?
Then ask yourself: - Given the number of leads generated, how
many did I convert into s.ales?
- What was the dollar volume of sales generated from each lead?
It's not a matter of time, either. If your marketing materials
aren't pulling in clients within a few days, they're not going
to do any better if you keep running them for months.
This client had the same problem with his marketing that my Dad
has with his boat; he just couldn't let go. After years of being
dragged up and down a rocky beach, my Dad's aluminum skiff has
lost many of the rivets in the bottom.
Put it in the water and throttle up the outboard, and fine
sprays of water push up through the small rivet holes as you
pick up speed. Everyone in the boat gets an upside down shower.
Wherever you're going, you arrive damp.
Every year, the family tries to get Dad to replace his skiff,
but he's had it so long he can't bring himself to part with it,
even though its not doing the basic job of keeping water out.
Is your marketing like my Dad's boat? You've used it for years
but it's not generating enough new business. If so, then it's
time for a change. It's time to use a marketing strategy that
puts you on top.
2006 © In Mind Communications, LLC. All rights reserved
About the author:
The author, Charlie Cook, helps service professionals, small
business owners and marketing professionals attract more clients
and be more successful. Sign up to receive the Free Marketing
Strategy eBook, '7 Steps to get more clients and grow your
business' at
http://www.marketingforsuccess.com
