Tune up Your Marketing for 2008
Dear Business Builder,
TGIF, another week has come and gone. I find it truly amazing how fast time slips by. Some weeks I feel as if I blink and it’s Friday again. For me time is measured not by birthdays, but by the winter holidays … Thanksgiving to New Years Day. On New Years Day, my mother always liked to say “tomorrow it will be Christmas” … and so it is and another year has miraculously passed. I suppose the older you get, the faster time travels. So knowing that, it pays to slow down and smell the roses every once and a while. And I can think of no better time to do that than starting now.
Next week is Thanksgiving, and for some of you I imagine you’re heading into the busiest time of your marketing year. If your success hinges on making the majority of your sales during the holiday season, I wish you much success and I hope you increase your sales over last year. And because I suspect many of you are marketing your wares online, I’ll bet you do just that. In fact, according to eMarketer’s Online Holiday Shopping Report, online retail sales are expected to be up 18.2% over last year.
But, if you’re like me and many of the marketing professionals I know, the holiday season is the slowest time of year in terms of sales and revenue generated. When you have products and services that aren’t typically considered holiday gifts, you may actually be slowing down your marketing efforts from mid-November through December.
For a direct marketer outside the retail catalog sector, it’s just too hard to compete with all the noise in the mail and on the web during the holiday season. Plus, our prospects are distracted this time of year setting aside personal and professional goals of improved health, weight loss, professional development, financial improvement, etc. and instead patronizing our retail friends. So if you find yourself in this predicament, what should you do? Take the rest of the year off? You could … but that’s not what I’ll be doing …
The Mission, if you Choose to Accept it:
Increase Sales over Last Year
If you’re in a market that experiences a lull over the holidays, there’s no better time to look back at all your marketing efforts over the last year and start planning for 2008. My mission when going through this process is simple … repeat the winners, improve (or retire) the losers and look for additional opportunities to increase sales over last year.
Here are two areas of your marketing plan that you should consider reviewing:
Past year’s promotions:
By reviewing all the promotions you executed during the year you can see a trend of the winners vs. the losers. The goal here is to determine what made the winners so successful. Was it killer copy, a highly targeted media plan or a perfectly executed teleseminar that made the promotion such a huge success? The key is to figure it out and then plan to replicate it as many times as possible next year.
After reviewing the winners, take a hard look at the losers. What made the losing promotions different from the winning promotions? Most likely you’ll see distinct differences right off the bat. Did the copy not resonant or miss its mark, was it confusing or did it lack emotion? Was the media or target audience wrong for the product? Was the offer unclear or the price wrong? Delve in and do a complete postmortem on these promotions. Then brainstorm ways to make the losers more like the winners. Plan to retest your improved promotions in the New Year.
New Product Development:
Chances are you developed a few new products this year. Some did well and others bombed miserably. Some products may have sold like gangbusters, some may have been tough to sell right out of the gate and others may have sold well but then were ultimately returned for refund. Similar to reviewing your marketing promotions above, you also want to review your product history.
How can you replicate or repurpose the products that sold well? Can you turn a teleseminar series into a course? Can you turn a years worth of newsletter issues into a book? Can you combine several nutritional supplements into a pack that addresses an even larger health concern? Brainstorm ways to continue the momentum of your best selling products. The work to produce and market this new repurposed product will be much less than creating a brand new product from scratch. Plus, the chances of success are much higher because you already have a built-in prospect … the customers that bought the original product the first time around.
And of course, take a hard look at the products that sold the least or had the highest rate of return. How can you improve those products and make them more like your best selling products? You not only want to review the price and the format or packaging, but you also want to review the content and the market for the product … perhaps you have a product market mismatch that could be easily addressed. Plan to make adjustments based on your findings and retest the products with the most chance of success in the New Year. Don’t be afraid to retire the poor selling products … that will ultimately free up time and money to concentrate on the winners.
Now that we’ve looked at what we’ve accomplished this year and started our plan for next year, let’s look for ways to boost sales and revenue in 2008 …
House File Marketing:
There is no better way to increase your revenue than through marketing to your existing customers. If you can find unique ways to create an ongoing communication with your customers, it will give you many ways to market your products on an ongoing basis and ultimately increase your revenue.
If you don’t have an e-zine or a customer newsletter, make 2008 the year you add one to your marketing mix. Consider adding a blog or a message board to your website if it makes sense for your business … these both invite existing customers to maintain an ongoing dialog with you and give them a reason to visit often.
Here are several other ways to increase your house file marketing efforts without bombarding your customers with more e-mail:
Bumps – Bump offers take place just after the initial sale. You may recognize these as “you may also like” or “other customers also bought” type offers you see on sites such as Amazon.com. Bump offers can be quick and easy to execute, after your customer completes their online purchase redirect them to a thank you page that contains a special one-time offer. It could be a trial of another product or a companion product that is the perfect compliment to the product they purchased. The key here is to truly make it a “special” offer that makes saying yes a no-brainer. This is usually done through discounts or special price breaks. Congratulations, you just added an additional stream of revenue.
Renewals – Do you have a product that is sold through a subscription or continuity? If so, then why not try to renew your new customers immediately? It may seem counter-intuitive to ask someone to renew when they’ve just made a purchase, but that is when your customer is most engaged. Serve them what is called in the subscription industry as a “renewal at birth.” Give them a very special offer to continue with your product for another year or pre-pay another month … you may be surprised just how many people take you up on your offer.
Auto-Orders – If you have a product that is a consumable or is sold in installments, then you should definitely consider offering customers the simplicity of an auto-order. An auto-order is billed and automatically shipped on a pre-determined basis such as monthly or quarterly. Give customers additional discounts, perks or bonuses for signing up for your auto-order program. Be sure to add an ongoing plan for marketing your auto-order program to your existing customers on a regular basis. Once they’ve signed up for auto-order be sure to omit them from any future auto-order promotions.
Memberships – Memberships are a great way to keep existing customers engaged with your business as well as generate a monthly revenue stream. And the beauty is almost any business can easily create a membership program. Once your customers become members, it gives you additional opportunities to add products to your funnel. Customers in your membership product usually go on to be your very best customers.
Here is one last thing to consider for the New Year …
Staffing and Resources:
No doubt, we are all crunched for time. And as small business owners, we often become a near one man band. But, ultimately so much multi-tasking will hurt our best laid plans. Consider how adding staff or contract workers to the mix could expand your ability to create and market new products or allow you to expand your services. Crunch the numbers and you may see that a little extra help may more than pay for itself and actually even skyrocket your sales, revenue and ultimately your income.
Hope that helped and have a Happy Thanksgiving!
Until next week,
Julie McManus
Editor, In the ‘Net Trenches
THE TOTAL PACKAGE
And Web Media Goddess
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