TWO. No matter how great your product or service is, the fact remains that those who “need to know” need to be aware of what you offer.
THREE. Not using or a poor handling of prospect and customer data.
FOUR. Not any or not enough customer and prospect data collected or analyzed.
FIVE.Not tracking and collecting customer data from your marketing channels – such as emails, social media, and your website.
SIX. Lacking a multi-strategic marketing approach.
SEVEN. Your marketing and advertising communications are not beneficial to your customers.
The biggest reason in building my list of seven insights started when people find the next wonderful thing in marketing, sales, and advertising to bring in more customers. For example, our first one was the introduction of direct mail. In the 1950s, advertising direct mail flourished because everyone had a mailbox.
Then color television hit the scene, followed by transistor radios. More channels entered the market. Contact management software was a sure hit. Next was data management, the WEB, social media and on and on.
What happened next?
If you are a mailer and guessed competition in the mailbox, you are correct. Direct mail is still in contention some 75 years later.
More competitive ideas, one after another for using direct mail, works for a while before some other channel offered a lower rate or another idea or two to persuade others that direct mail is dead.
A next-door neighborhood once mentioned to me when he was in grade school in the sixties, he delivered newspaper sized flyers for one of the area’s largest department stores. They were 10 to 12 pages and sometimes more with a holiday approaching, which he folded and threw a copy toward the front door to every house in his neighborhood. He guessed the total delivery was over 500 to 600 flyers every Thursday. I’m certain he was cheaper than the postage cost using direct mail delivery.
Other channels entered the market in the sixties. Television was growing, especially color. The transistor radio entered the market providing more people to hear a sales message. Next, more channels emerged, such as contact management software, CRM, customer data, social media.
At present, the next best marketing and advertising channel to use is digital marketing, not only retail, but B2B as well. Since almost everyone has the means to visit the web, direct mail again has more competition.
Customers come and go. Their life changes. People move. There is a new flavor down the road. There are many reasons for how and why customers change.
Look at my 7 insights once again. Then dig into your customers and prospect data. The more you know about customers and potential customers, alerts you about changes in their purchasing patterns. Changes in your competition. Changes in communication channels you used to reach them.
Insight is a wonderful thing in marketing and advertising.
Thanks for reading. In marketing, nothing is new or surprising. The only thing certain is the customer has many options. Spending time to learn more about them, what they like, will pay off. Please call me, MarketingDoc, (800-251-3608) or email, Mdoc@direct2customers.com. We are always here to help you meet your marketing and mailing goals.
Please share with others–except your competition!
Direct marketing copy is like a puzzle.
Sharing my time with you is not over at the end of a post. There are many ideas I experienced in owning a small business. My ideas about using and writing direct marketing and customer-centric copy are from my experience as a small business owner and a marketing entrepreneur in marketing, advertising, and selling content, articles, reports based on my philosophy of people learn by reading, then learn by doing.
Please join our Direct2Customers Marketing Community today!
Really-it’s more than your last chance for a purchase now!
You risk the chance of losing the customer forever.
A landing page creates a sense of urgency or immediacy—giving customers and prospects a reason to buy or to act now! Force the action, response, or the purchase to occur now, rather than later or not at all.
When You Learn More, You Will Earn More.
A landing web page allows your customers to access a web page that speaks directly to them. It is a great tool for integrating offline, online, and email messages to increase the effectiveness of your direct marketing campaigns.
Use proper design elements. The design of the page can influence the reader’s feeling of the offer’s urgency.
Learn by reading, learn by doing.
Do not request too much information. Put yourself in the reader’s shoes—there is nothing more off-putting than a request for excessive personal information.
You can have fun with direct marketing in the traditional and digital worlds—combine tricks and tactics, work with benefits, and motivate your readers to consider something new.
Landing pages are quite the accomplice to other direct marketing communication channels.
Give the reader a little motivation or an offer of value. Do not get greedy, just go for one goal and you will capture more later.
Direct marketing can make a buying experience more pleasant for the customer and measure the effectiveness of different ads, copy or design with a landing page. Consider employing a game or contest to attract more people to learn more about your company or organization.
Direct marketing mail, email, plus other affordable communication channelsincrease more participation and successful campaigns.
Don’t forget about ABT – Always Be Trying or is it Always Be Testing? Either will work for you, so try ABT in your next marketing campaign.
Please share with others–except your competition!
Direct marketing copy is like a puzzle.
Sharing my time with you is not over at the end of a post. There are many ideas I experienced in owning a small business. My ideas about using and writing direct marketing and customer-centric copy are from my experience as a small business owner and a marketing entrepreneur in marketing, advertising, and selling content, articles, reports based on my philosophy of people learn by reading, then learn by doing.
Please join our Direct2Customers Marketing Community today!
(From DMS 17.3, article 2. Download the complete publication at the end of this post)
Which one scores your highest ratings in marketing and advertising?
In the past, having a conversion rate when using direct mail, one percent was acceptable. What was the conversion rate number?
First, let us look at another example. A response rate is an important metric for analyzing a mailing or any other communication channel your customers may prefer. But a high response rate is not always the best goal.
If you’re trying to generate sales leads for a high-dollar service where the contract might be over one million dollars, a single reply that results in a sale might give you a low response rate, but it would likely represent a significant return on investment.
Therefore, your goal is not to maximize response but to maximize profit. Direct mailers in the past century would continually buy more lists to increase their mailing number hoping to get more responses. Hence, the name, junk mail.
Some of today’s digital marketers love telling anyone that listens they have over 200,000 followers. Hence the name, digital flame out.
So, how do we raise our profit? One way is a mindset of delivering an offer, direct to the customer, and add another channel, such email or social media channel, and test to verify your outcome.
Testing allows adjustments which can create a nice increase to maximize your profit.
While there is a lot of creativity that goes into writing and designing communications, testing should be a careful and disciplined process. This is another example of using science in your marketing efforts within our data driven era.
Test one item at a time.
It may be temptation to test a variety of ideas in every message. If so, it is impossible to know what element is responsible for changing your results.
For example, if you use a new subject line at the same time trying a new segment, which change will affect your results? By testing only one change per message, you can immediately see what causes your positive or negative results.
If you want to improve your landing page conversions, then use Split testing, better known as A/B testing.
For example, use A/B testing with two versions of your landing page that are almost entirely the same but have one specific difference you want to test. For instance, you could A/B test which headline or offer converts more by creating one page with a headline or offer A and the other headline with an offer B. Half of your visitors will see version A and the other half will see version B.
Test against your “control.”
A/B testing can work with any communication channel you want. Even your control can be an email that has proven to be a winner. Once you have determined a winner, you can test other email messages or formats against it.
This type of testing works like a contest, with the old and new competing against each other. If your control wins, you know you should continue using it.
If the challenger wins, you know you might have a new control and should consider emailing the new message or format instead.
While there is a lot of creativity that goes into writing and designing your marketing communications, testing should be a careful and disciplined process.
Summary
The key takeaway is to test one marketing or advertisement message at a time. Plus, check out your analytics for additional campaign insights for maximizing your profit.
Are you looking for more business? Or better business? Or a new prospect list?
You are not alone. The Covid-19 pandemic has turned our business marketing and selling world upside down.
Maintaining your team’s enthusiasm to get people to buy your product and/or your service in our present pandemic is mind boggling at best. Try this! Do that! That never works! And the beat goes on.
It’s always been a challenge to create consistently awesome attractions. But now, it is a overwhelming challenge to earn the attention of potential prospects. The playing field of marketing and sales has changed dramatically.
One such solution is finding a group of marketing sleuths in your organization. Look for people with a varietyofability, suchashaving a keen sense of solving problems,peoplein your marketplace looking for change and even good thinking customers.The resultis mixing all suggestions and ideas in a marketing blender and spilling it all on a table for you and your team to sort out.
You need to arriveatideas which is the right marketing content and communication channels that can reach your contacts and temptthem in ways with a compelling mix of opinions and insight in today’s economy as transformed by the pandemic within your industry.
So much of the knowledge and thought leadership from the people on your list thatworks them may also work for your company. You need to stop thinking that the pandemic will somehow disappear, and everything returns to normal. So many of the normal ways of attracting customers are no longer useful. Business’s small and large, are laying people off every day.For example, when was the last trade show you visited?
Comment and offer at the end of this post.
Delegate a technical customer manager.
This role is for someone that sees the value of the science of data analytics and the art of marketing. Then, make itin the employee’s job description and might include incentive pay. Goalscould be copywriting, using printed materials, landing pages, personalization, digital, and whatever is collected fromprospects and customer segments. Without a single ‘owner’ to take responsibilityon marketing, sales activity and response of testing, the investigation is often disorganized, and the results are inconsistent.
If you are a company who believes in and use some of the concepts ofa customer-centricmarketing strategy, you probablyhave an advantage with communication channelschoice.Conversely, if you are not a fan, you need to start.
Just the other day I saw these two headlines.
Walgreens Marketing Moves into Mass Personalization
Mercedes-Benz marketing boss: Our customised agency is making us more human-centric
Customer-centric marketing, or whatever you may call it, is a known marketing strategythat works.
Experiment with a little bit of this and just a touch of that.
Think of customer-centric marketing as a consistent delivery of value to each customer. Your company marketing and sales must be centered on listening to what your customers wantand have a particular opinion, belief or ideasusingmore ways for building business relationships with personalization.
Our second strategy, data driven marketing isalso based on personalization.It assumes that you know something about the contacts to whom you are mailing, emailing, or sending to a landing page and so forth. It’s an effective way to keep customers spending their money on your products and services, by understanding their needs
Number three, a digital marketing strategy, design solutions for your business to attract and keep customers, get end-to-end visibility into all marketing and selling campaigns, from impression to revenue. You need a customer-focus mentality (personalization) to see and understand why your customers buy or not buy.
Digital marketing is a goodmarketer’schoicefor the near future.
Direct mail, websites, email, advertisements, even content marketing, are a few of the communication channels, you may use today. They each have their pro’s and con’s. But this is a challenging time with so many unknowns.
At this point in time, what works? Marketing and sales?Are the salespeople getting appointments? Are they still making sales? These questions need answers. Staying on the same course may work for now, but for how long?
Depending on your answers, your new technical customer manager will have her or his back to the wall, to have answers you needto compete in the pandemic marketplace. Ease in other company contributorswith theirspecialties in the wheelhouse. Challenging times can uncover thought provider ideas or insights that may enhance marketing and sales success.
Summary
The only known that I am sure of, is not to do nothing. I recently read an article on the CDC website that this pandemic may last through 2021.
Your advantage is what you decide on doing now, going hard after new and present business, will keep working for your company in the new world you are facing when a vaccine is available for controlling and ending the pandemic.
Could you comment how your company has changed the way they are marketing in the pandemic.?
Conversely, if your company is facing tough times in marketing and sales, send me a note or comment about your situation and I’ll be happy to share some suggestions.
Everyone who responds will become a subscriber to our Direct2Customers community.
Thanks for reading and please share with others – except your competition! Your time is genuinely appreciated.
Learning and doing, marketing, and selling ideas, is what you’ll find at your Direct2Customers community.
But hold on a second. Are more choices still a good idea?
My experienceas a business owneranda direct marketing geek, I know that sometimes less is more when it comes to choosing. In other words, choice comes with a cost.
For example, if you are selling a new app every mother would want, you may be tempted to offer a variety of response avenues: email, contact us page on your website or a landing page, social media, and even a toll–free phone number. Just like my direct2customers marketing community. The logic is that everyone prefers a different method, so if you offer them all you increase the number of orders you get. Right?
Not always. Sometimes, all those choices work against you because choosing between them may take an extra split second, which is enough to cause someone to put off responding until later. Once that happens, you may never get the answer at all.
It may seem like a subtle distinction, but there is a difference between offering choices and introducing extra decisions. If the “choice” of response method becomes a “decision,” you can reduce the number of buyers and even orders.
For a reader-oriented medium such as a blog or content marketing, it is often best to offer a reader-oriented response and nothing else. That means forcing people to respond and provide no other avenue for response. Since there is only one way to reply, there is no decision to make.However, your copywriting must be crisp and to the point ofwhat you want them to do.
If you own orwork for a companythat does most of its business online, driving people to asingle contactlinkin your copy, makes the most sense. Again, there is no decision on how to respond, so there is one less hurdle for prospects to jump.
Is this always the best approach? Yes and no, depending on what your marketing contacts prefer. The only way to be sure whether to offer one or multiple response methods, is to test. If you offer several ways now, look at your data tracking to see how many answers come in through each type.
You might be surprised to find that one is favored to a much greater extent than the others. This could be the basis for testing whether one type of response can increase or decrease your total response.
Thanks for reading and please share with others – except your competition! Your time is truly appreciated.
Learning and doing, marketing and selling ideas, is what you’ll find at Direct2Customers community.
