Cloud Marketing Labs, a Northfield, NJ firm that assists companies with their marketing efforts, offers six substantial tips to get your marketing program back on track in 2010.
- Measure everything. Wasteful marketing can be a real drain on a businesses’ budget. Before you start any type of marketing, set up a system in which you can measure the success or failure of each marketing strategy and tactic.
- Have a good lead generation system. Never in the history of marketing have there been so many ways to attract customers to a website or store front. The trick is to sort through the clutter to find what works for your business and your customers. By knowing your customers, you’ll know exactly in which medium your business should advertise. Every business that struggles to find customers does so for at least one of these six reasons. This book was written to give business owners a practical guide to a successful marketing system.
- Know your customers. Building a marketing system without knowing your customers is like building a house on marshland. It will collapse immediately. Knowing your customers will allow you to determine how best to get your potential customers attention. Get out of the office and interview them. Find out what problems they have, what magazines they read, which websites they frequent. If you bury yourself in their world, you will build the foundation for a successful marketing campaign.
- Compete on value, not price. Too many business owners think that consumers simply want the lowest priced product or service. Once you find what your customers’ value, then you can charge a premium for it.
- Speak about your customer’s problems, not your products. Often, business owners build an entire marketing system around the product specifications. For instance, the website and brochure will speak endlessly about how fast a signal processor is, or how much data a product can store. Instead, these brochures should speak about the customers problems and how you, as a business owner, can solve them.
- Offer multiple products for multiple customers. Not all customers are the same. Some customers may want an introductory offer, while others can’t wait to tell their friends about you. By treating every customer the same, you are doing a disservice to your business and your customer.