January 2011 Top 5 Marketing Tips

Below are the top 5 marketing tips for January 2011 – simple tips to help you improve the effectiveness of your marketing.

1. Calculate Lifetime Client Profit Value – do you know how much, on average, a client is worth to you in profit over the course of their lifetime?

If not, analyse your historical sales data so that you know this figure.  How do you know how much you are willing to spend on winning a client if you don’t how much one is worth to the business?

In order to do this you will need to know the average transaction value, the average profit margin, the average number of transactions a clients makes in a year and the number of years, on average, a customer stays with the business.

This will help you modestly calculate the lifetime profit value (as it does not take into account referred business).

2. Understand who (or what) you are competing against – all customers have decisions to make – whether it is between two competing suppliers for the same product or service or whether it is to spend their money on an alternative product or service.

Find out the most common scenarios they face and which channels they use.  The way you differentiate against online competitors may well be completely different to a local competitor based around the corner!

3. Ensure your core proposition is clear – have you ever come across a company and not had a clue what they actually do?  Has anyone ever had the same thoughts about your business?

Are you being as clear as can be about what you do for clients?  Many companies start off with a core product and service, but over a period of time bolt on a plethora of additional revenue generating products and services.  Quite often this, from a customer perspective, results in a confusing proposition.

Spend your time and money promoting your core activity – you can sell in other products and services later.

4. One message at a time – don’t try and sell everything you do in every communication.  It can become tempting to make a campaign more cost effective by cramming in multiple ‘calls to action’ and trying to appeal to everyone.  The most effective campaigns are the simplest.  Not only are they more effective but it makes tracking and measuring campaigns much easier.

5. Ask for referrals – when is the last time you asked your satisfied customers whether they would be happy to refer you?  Too many people never ask.  Existing customers can be a goldmine for new prospects and if you have provided a fantastic service why on earth would they not want to tell everyone (particularly if you reward them)?