The most important thing you can do in any marketing campaign or promotion is to test and measure everything that you do.
One promotion I regularly run to generate quality sales leads for my business is a "Lottery Letter Promotion". This is basically a sales letter offering the reader a Free Marketing Audit worth £197. It includes an attention grabber (in this case a lottery ticket) and a great headline. The letter goes on to explain the benefits of the Marketing Audit and why the reader should book one today.
This is then followed up with a phone call. I have found that the lottery ticket is a great ice breaker and people always remember the letter.
The letters are sent to a cold - but very targeted - list and for every 10 letters I send I normally get 3 appointments. If I do a good job at the meeting 1 of these will normally become a client. I am sure you are aware that a 2% response rate to a cold list is considered good.
The reason I'm telling you this is not to brag about the results (although naturally I'm very pleased) but to demonstrate the importance of testing and measuring. I know that when I need more new clients I simply send out more lottery letters. For every 10 letters I send 1 will become a loyal client. There is no guesswork. I don't have to sit around waiting for the phone to ring. I simply send some letters.
From well over 100 consultations with business owners I can only think of ONE who accurately monitored the results of ALL his adverts and promotions. He could tell me exactly how many people responded to a particular advert, of those how many purchased, and how much profit he made from it.
Once, he changed his adverts and the response went down. Therefore he did not repeat them but went back to those that were giving him a good result.
By testing and measuring he was able to only run adverts which consistently performed well. And when he wanted to test an advert in a new publication he knew that if he got no response it was the publication and NOT his advert - so he didn't run it again.
Sounds simple? Makes sense? So why can't most business owners give such detailed statistics?
Now you may monitor your advertising to a degree - by asking everyone how they heard about you. That's great and you're already ahead of many businesses.
The next step is to analyse the answers each month. Track each lead and keep records of the sales which were generated from it. Record how much profit it made you. Note any referrals that come from that customer.
Now you may be thinking - you don't have time to monitor all that.
Well, if you spend any money on promoting your business - be it newsletters to your customers, adverts in trade journals, direct mail, etc, etc - you can't afford not to. Why not? Because, unless you know the exact return on every advert or promotion you're effectively throwing money down the toilet.
Many businesses assume they get new customers from their adverts or promotions because that's where they're spending money. However they also tell me that most of their business comes through recommendation or "word of mouth". And yet they have no active strategy to increase referrals.
One business owner I met spent over £13,000 on Yellow Pages advertising. He had no strategy for monitoring how people heard of him and therefore had no idea where his customers came from. They may have come via the Yellow Pages but then perhaps the majority were recommended. Is that Yellow Pages advert a worthwhile investment? Maybe - but unless he measures it he has no way of knowing.
Would you put £13,000 in the bank without knowing what return you're likely to get - or whether you'd lose the lot? If it did go down in value there would be uproar and you'd be demanding compensation. Northern Rock springs to mind.
Through testing and measuring you might find that one promotion generates 5 times as many new clients as another. So it would make sense to continuously run that one and stop the others.
I guarantee that if you start testing and measuring consistently and accurately you will make more money.
Test everything on a small scale first and when you have a winner - roll it out. It takes the guesswork out of marketing - you can predict your sales. You will be busy when all around you are suffering from the credit crunch.
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Melina Abbott helps entrepreneurial business owners get more custoners and increase sales and profits - without spending a fortune on expensive advertising. You can sign up for free tips and ideas, including a fortnightly newsletter at http://www.businessbyresults.com
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