Is your customer willing to pay for your marketing?

admin — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 17:00:00 +0000

How do you add value in your marketing? Have you thought about it? To be effective in Content or Educational Marketing you must add value as defined by the customer. I want you to steer away from your first thought, which is more than likely your product or service, but instead think about your marketing material. For your Content marketing material to be effective, I believe it must have 4 components:

Value Added: Your marketing needs to add additional knowledge or be a reinforcer of your product or service to your customer. A blog or commenting on LinkedIn are several online examples. It can be done in traditional advertising and marketing. Using a 2-step advertising strategy and offer something of value versus trying to coerce them into buying a product. Especially consider your marketing message in each step of your marketing process or value stream. I believe that if you are effectively using the Pillars of Lean Marketing House properly that you need to increase the value of your offering as you walk someone through the process. You must also segment your list during the process so that the perceived value is also recognized.

Quality: If you look at marketing in today’s world, I believe authenticity is sometimes more important than a professional full color ad in your trade magazine. People want to become connected, just review some of the YouTube videos of BlendTec and the Will it Blend series. Variability is the lager culprit of quality. It goes without saying, your marketing should be professionally looking, but I believe the biggest problems with quality is variability. It confuses the message to your customer. When you dilute your marketing message not only by confusing advertising but sometimes being in the wrong place, even with the wrong customer, can send mixed messages to your target market.

Time: Delivering your message when a customer needs it, is imperative. Before or after the proper time reduces the value tremendously. Few customers will put it in a file and save it for when they need it. We are simple on information overload – ALL THE TIME. The timeliness of your message is important to understand. You seldom can do this without understanding your customers buying cycle and the needs they have during that cycle.

Cost: This is a little of a 2-way street here. One you must consider your own cost and the ROI on doing the particular piece. You have to determine if a Super bowl Ad is worth it. However, when I consider the marketing piece I am going to employ, I like to think of it in a different way. Is the content something that the customer would pay for? If this does not raise the bar on your marketing, you are doing a lot of things correct. If you had a free whitepaper to download, why not sell it on Amazon for $2.00. Is is worth it? Is not relinquishing my e-mail address and giving you permission to market to me worth $2.00. Look at your marketing material and put a value to it! Better yet, ask your customer if there is a value to it?

Would it be great if your customer was willing to pay for your marketing?

Related Information:

Value Stream Mapping

The Pillar Worksheet

Lean Marketing House Overview – Video

Machine Gun Marketing

admin — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:19:00 +0000

I was reading Success Coaching U Blog and Joe wrote an article about Ready, Aim, Fire. Good headline, you already can guess what the headline is about, Target Marketing. I remembered a piece of advice I received from another Duct Tape Marketing Coach on targeting your direct mail, which I call the Machine Gun approach. For obvious reasons, I won’t disclose the source, but the following statistics were shared:

I don’t have a success story, I have a sobering story. Here it is:
Number of pieces mailed: 10,000
Response rate: 1%
Number of inquiries: 96
Number that you manage to reach by phone to qualify: 70
Cost of qualifying by phone, per inquiry: $30
Number who turn out to be qualified leads (20%): 14
Total cost of qualifying ($30 X 70): $2,100
Campaign cost of $10,000 + phone qualifying cost = $12,200

Total cost of $12,200 divided by 14 qualified leads = $871.42. In other words, you must spend $871.42 to get to each lead who needs your product or service, can afford it, has authority to buy, and is ready to buy now. Not so good for a small business….

I will call this method the Machine Gun Marketing. Another method of Machine Gun Marketing is the Marketing Idea of the Week. You have an Ad Rep call on you and they have this special 3 for 2 deal. Plus they have this even that they will be attending and handing out another 1,000 pieces of whatever they are selling. Oh yeah, you will also be exclusive to your area of expertise and we will even create the ad. What a deal! But….you will have to do something by Thursday, this being Tuesday. Sounds like a great idea?

If it is not part of your overall marketing strategy, if it not targeted, and I mean really targeted, and you have extra cash in your marketing budget that you were just clueless on how to spend it and you have no collateral material supporting it and you cannot create the ad yourself(a two-step ad, by the war), and you already know how you are going to measure it and….. I have asked Ad reps, that I do not respond to this type of marketing, many have stopped calling. I wonder why…has their machine gun jammed or just ran out of bullets?

Technorati : Advertising, Direct Mail, Ideal Client, Target Marketing

Product Marketing System » Advertising

Is your customer willing to pay for your marketing?

Machine Gun Marketing