Army! A Complete Guide To Effectively Market Your Small Business.
You want to know as much as you possibly can about each and every person involved in buying from your business.
Shotgun Marketing
Shotgun marketing, simply throwing money away on ads, yellow pages, and promotions are not the way to do business in the 21st century. The way to do business is to really zero in on who your market is, and who your potential market is, and then follow up by matching your message to that market.
Who are your customers? And what do you know about them?
When I ask an audience at one of my seminars who their customers are, they usually answer with very nebulous answers. Recently a lady who ran a toy store answered by saying, “Well, gee, most of ‘em are kids.” That’s not a good answer. What do their parents do? Where do they work? What do they drive? What else do they do? Is the kid involved in Little League? Is the kid involved in swimming? Is the kid involved in hockey or soccer?
You want to know as much as you possibly can about each and every person involved in buying from your business. Because once you start tabulating these results, you’re going to find that there are some very, very distinct patterns to the people that patronize your store. Maybe you’ll find that 50% of them all go to the same private school. Maybe you’ll find that 20% of them all go to the same church. consider this, suppose you’re spending $400 or $500 a week running an ad in the local paper or the Shopper. All of a sudden the church comes along, or you hear through the grapevine, that the church is having a church fair, or a Christmas fair, or something like that, and they want to know whether you’ll be interested in spending $100 for a booth. If you’ve got 20 or 30 clients from the same church, spending $100 on that booth is a tremendous optimization of your time, money and effort. So, understanding really who your customers are can give you a tremendous advantage over many of your competitors. Because most of your competitors are out there shotgunning the world and trying to see what sticks. That’s not the way to market these days. The way to market is to truly target two or three very specific groups.
If you do that, the results will be tremendous!
Market Research
Gathering Marketing Information
Before you can successfully design an ad or select the best media or marketing methods for your business, you must first determine the exact nature of your client base; i.e., “Who are they and what do they want?” Multi-billion dollar, Fortune 500 companies spend millions every year to keep their finger on the pulse of their markets. The data they gather shapes the future of their company and how they will spend their advertising dollars. How to gather information An easy and convenient way to gather information about your customers is to include some specific questions on your application, if you use one before a sale, or on your warranty card after purchase. If neither an application or warranty card applies to your business, you can offer a small premium or gift for those customers who are willing to answer a few short questions on a survey or on a simple customer service card. In my experience, very few people are unwilling to give you this information if you nicely ask them.
For example, “Mrs. Smith, may I ask you a couple of questions that would aid us in our marketing efforts?” Or “Sir, if you would give us your business card, or fill in our customer card, we’ll give you a free golf ball.” In my seminars, I gather leads and information by offering a free newsletter to anyone who gives me their business card. This, of course, gives me their name, address, phone, fax and e-mail, all very useful for my future marketing efforts. If you are in a business where you can have the clients fill in an application or some kind of registration card, the application should include these questions:
#1. Where do you work?
This is a useful piece of information. Let’s say you have a customer in the printing business, another who is a lawyer, and yet another who is an accountant. These customers and others whose services you may require at one time or another are normally willing to help you at a reduced cost. It’s often possible to trade or barter your services for printing, accounting, or other services, and eliminate certain expenses altogether. A second, perhaps more important reason for asking this question, is to determine this particular person’s sphere of influence. For example as someone who speaks for a living, I come into contact with a very large group of people that I will influence one way or another. Good experiences and bad alike get shared with thousands of people. A corporate VP or CEO will be able to help you distribute your literature for free or get you in front of hundreds of people if you win them over to your side. A Pizza store owner will have a great place to put lead boxes, while another professional might be the source of additional referrals.
Apart from anything else, knowing what a person does gives you an excellent opportunity to talk to them and build rapport during your initial contact. By getting prospective or existing customers talking about what they do, you are building that most vital of marketing ingredients, instant rapport.
#2. Where do you live?
This is, of course, a basic question which other than adding to your database can save you thousands of wasted dollars a year. When I was running a small karate school in Irvine, California I generated the majority of my prospective calls each month from the full-page ads I ran in a local direct mail publication called the Pennysaver. The Pennysaver was divided into five zones with each zone representing approximately ten thousand people. For months I ran in all five zones since my business was more or less centrally located to all the zones. Then one day with little on my agenda, I bought a street map of the city and started to plot where my customers lived with little red pins. Low and behold, 90% of my customers came from one of the five zones. It was a startling discovery since it wasn’t even the most affluent of the zones. From that point on I was able to reduce the cost of my advertising by almost 70% and still attract the same number of customers. Every now and then I’d test an ad back out in the other zones, but the fact remained that the bulk of my students came from a single zone.
Do your homework.
It’s well worth the effort to check your city street map and place a dot or pin representing each customer on their street address. Then draw a ring around your location slightly outside the largest concentration of customers. This will give you your advertising target area. The area within the circle will produce the most effective return for your advertising dollar. Look at the areas with the highest concentration of names, is it a different zip code, housing development, or area? Each differentiation you can make should give you clues on how to target your market more effectively in the future!
#3. What made you choose our business?
The prospective customer’s answer to this question will not only help you in your marketing efforts it will very often enable you to individualize your sales presentation to his exact needs. Sell him exactly what he wants... not what you think he should want! Zone in on each individual’s particular needs. If he says he chose your golf instruction business because you were close and he wants to hit the ball further, you can then explain how your tuition will have that precise effect. Very often you can get massive insight into what you should be focusing your marketing message on by listening to what customers are saying.
note: Very often you can get massive insight into what you should be focusing your marketing message on by listening to what customers are saying.
#4. What is your goal?
This is a very important question that might be asked in several different ways depending on your business. In the Martial Arts business, we would ask what the student hoped to gain by taking lessons. Once they answered, it not only gave us fuel to target our future marketing but just as in the previous question, it also gave us the answers needed to actually sign the prospect up. In some cases, you might list possible goals and have them check one or more. For instance, if you had a weight loss center you might have them enter their ideal weight!
Over some time in the Martial Arts business, I noticed that more and more mothers were checking an increase in their child’s self-esteem as the primary reason why they were signing their child up for karate lessons. This small item allowed me to develop a new series of ads which were quite simply the most successful we ever developed.
The ad read, “Arm Your Child With Self Esteem,” and the phone rang off the hook simply because we were paying attention to what our customers were telling us in their applications.
#5. How did you hear about our business?
This will give you some indication of how well your present ads and promotions are working. Did the prospect see your ad in the local newspaper or the Yellow Pages? Was he referred to you by another customer or by an acquaintance? If so, make a note to personally thank the person who recommended your services. Did they drive by and see you sign from the side of the road or did a coupon or flyer peak their interest. This feedback tells you where to spend more of your marketing money and where to stop spending it! In my advertising business, just as I was questioning the value of my monthly newsletter, two clients in a row said it was the deciding factor in choosing my business. It went on to produce $500,000 worth of billable business in the next few months.
In the karate business, the Pennysaver always seemed to pull well in my one store, yet at a second location not far away it produced nothing. In yet another store, coupons proved to be the best use of marketing dollars. The fact is that what works in one area won’t always work in another, even with the same business.
That’s why it’s crucial to determine how people are finding out about you and to direct your budget in that direction.
#6. Do you know of anyone else who might benefit from our products or service?
This is a wonderful way to uncover future leads, and you would be surprised how many people will fill in a name and number. Why? Because they have been asked a question and it was asked in writing.
These are some of the key questions you can ask on an application or customer card. The key is to use this information to spot trends that affect your marketing and to uncover any spheres of influence your customers may have at work or with friends who might also benefit from what you have to sell.
Post a Comment