Today we bring back a popular post from last year. As you plan for 2017, keep these tips in mind!
Your competitors are handing you a huge opportunity. Did you know that most of them will not take the time to thoroughly plan their marketing for next year? Grab that opportunity by stepping through these 5 pointers. Strong businesses don’t happen by accident; they happen by planning.
Evaluate
Start by evaluating your marketing results from the past year. How much was invested in marketing? What were your sales? What percent of sales has been reinvested in marketing? What was the return on your investment (ROI)? Which advertising mediums have been performing well and should receive a greater share of the budget; conversely, which should be minimized or eliminated? Are your clients happy? Which services or products are making them happy, or not? How can you build on your strengths and counteract your weaknesses?
Next, evaluate your place in the market. What is your unique selling proposition? What sets you apart from your competition? Is it still valid, or have your competitors caught up? Remember that, besides the actual product differences, your competitive advantages can include providing better customer service, producing superior craftsmanship, or catering to a niche customer base.
Who is your target customer? Is he still the same as he was a year ago? How has the market been changing? How do you expect it to keep changing? Is your product (or service) being left behind as the world changes around it? Should you improve your product by developing it further? Maybe your product still meets a need, but you are marketing to the wrong group of people.
Update
Begin by updating your product or service offerings. Does your lineup have gaps that force your clients to go elsewhere for something you could easily supply? Maybe a new customer group has begun using your product for an application you never envisioned; you simply need to begin marketing to them. On the other hand, you might need to discontinue offerings that distract you from your core strengths. By being a jack-of-all-trades, have you become a master of none?
Secondly, update your pricing. Begin by throwing last year’s cost-up calculations into the wood stove. List the key value points for your industry, such as quality, size, functionality, and delivery time. For each of your key points, chart yourself against your competitors to compare your competitors’ pricing to the value they deliver.
Once you have a picture for how you stack up against your competition, price your services or products accordingly. If your product is better, it should be priced that way. Why? Price is the shopper’s single biggest indicator of value. Low pricing creates the expectation of low value. You may even find yourself selling more of a product after you raise your prices, as in the case of the furniture retailer who raised their prices by over 40% to more closely align with the competitions’ prices. As a result, they sold more pieces, because shoppers now believed that the retailer could deliver the quality they were looking for.
Strategize
Brew a pot of coffee and invite a few co-workers or friends to a brainstorming session to answer this question: “How can you break out of your marketing box?” Don’t be afraid to try new things. When trying new ideas, it is inevitable that some of them will fail. Are you OK with that? When your ideas do succeed, you will be rewarded beyond the cost of the failures. Here are a few ideas to explore.
If you are a manufacturer or distributor, do you have untapped product-distribution channels? Those of you who strictly wholesale to retail stores might consider using distributors who have a wider reach. Maybe you should add your own retail channel. For example, Apple will sell you an iPhone not only through Best Buy and the Verizon store, but also through their own website. Or, if your product is solely channeled through brick and mortar dealers, could you begin selling through one or two online dealers?
Similarly (and this applies to all businesses), could you add more gateways (ways in which your company solicits and receives orders)? Examples of gateways include storefront sales locations, lead-generating or e-commerce websites, industry trade shows, telephone orders, mail-order operations — really any method by which a customer can communicate an order to a business.
Thirdly, consider your sales funnel. Can you improve or add to your lead-generation tools, such as by creating better-designed brochures and ads, finding new advertising venues, or producing more creative writing, photography, or videography? In addition, if you are a wholesaler, you should also provide tools to your retailers. Guess who you are helping if you help them sell your product!
But what good are leads if they do not turn into purchases? Do you have systems in place to follow up, to answer questions, to build trust in your company, and to close the deals? Often, simple changes in your conversion process can revolutionize the efficiency of your advertising. Recently we had that experience on client’s a website. Improving the user experience on the website roughly tripled the leads generated by the site, cutting advertising costs from over $100 per lead to less than $30. As you can imagine, multiplying the sales generated times three will make a big difference to the bottom line!
Company branding plays an overarching role in both the sales and the conversion processes. As potential customers begin to recognize your company brand, they will be more likely to trust you to meet their needs in the future.
Plan
Now that you have a list of ideas, it is time to put your plans on paper. Start by setting your marketing budget. Segment your budget between branding, marketing to new customers, and marketing to existing customers. Primarily, this will ensure that you remember to market to your existing customers; they are the low-hanging fruit.
Also, plan a calendar with deadlines for beginning and completing each phase of the marketing effort. Think through the chain reactions. If you are planning for a show in April, you may need a show-booth designed and created, for which you will need banners and catalogs, for which you will need pictures. And since the show will be in the spring, and you don’t want to use drab winter scenes for your outdoor products, you may need to have those pictures taken the summer before your show. Putting these things on your calendar can save you many gray hairs — and a few gold coins.
While you are planning what to do, also plan who will do it. Whether the doers of your plan are internal employees, or whether you are hiring outside professionals, schedule the work with them so that they can plan ahead.
Execute
Now that you have a plan, work your plan! Set regular intervals to review progress on the plan. What is working? What isn’t? Adjust your plan when you have a good reason to do so. Otherwise, stay your course the whole way through December 31, 2017!
