A very important point to keep in mind with any marketing is that you must test, test, and test again. A few hours spent ensuring that you are using correct messages can save months of useless promotion, and tons of marketing money.

An essential part of your testing is having a method in place that allows you to track your return on funds invested. Keep in mind that with any successful marketing strategy, it is vital to ensure that you know who your audience is and how to reach customers.

Here is the short explanation of what you should measure in marketing:

• Number of leads for the month – How many people contacted you?
• Value of leads for the month – How much sales can these leads generate, based on your sales conversion rate and average sales value
• Sales made for the month – How much sales did you get in a particular month?
• Number of new sales - How many sales came from new customers who had never bought from you before?
• Value of new sales - What was the value of these new sales?
• Number of outstanding opportunities – How many leads have not turned into sales yet and still look promising?
• Value of outstanding opportunities - What is the value of these outstanding leads?
• Referrals gained - How many referrals did you get in a particular month?
• Testimonials received - How many testimonials did you receive in a particular month?
• Number of sales calls per rep - How many sales calls did an average sales rep make?
• Number of sales calls made – What was the total number of sales calls made by all sales reps?
• Marketing expenditure for the month – How much did you spend on marketing in a particular month?
• Customer complaints – How many customer complaints did you receive in a particular month?

Once you have a few very powerful marketing messages that enable customers to see clearly the value in your products and when they hear what is in it for them, it will feel good to buy from you.

So think about the following when you put the headline on your next flyer:

1. How could you polish the message and is there a way you could improve any word of it?
2. Is there a way you could test individual marketing messages by asking customers how much they value the benefits you used in the messages?
3. Imagine you could transfer each of these messages into powerful testimonials from customers – what would be the best way to do this?

There are many nearly successful companies, who have great goals and ambitions like you, however encounter many problems. Some of the key issues that they may be facing are as follows;

• The sales team is converting less than 10% of opportunities into sales.
• There is no process for lead qualification and many leads are falling through the cracks.
• The sales team is not following defined sales processes.
• There is a lack of adequate sales management.
• There is no measurement of Key Performance Indicators.
• There is no consistent format for pricing proposals being used.
• There is no process to gauge customer satisfaction levels.
• There is no process to gather customer testimonials.
• There is no process to obtain customer referrals.
• It is not clear what leads are generated by the marketing spend.

Do any of these seem familiar? Could you improve anything and grow your business?

What other companies could help your customers get the same benefit as your company? Are there many of them in Ireland? Where do you stand compared to them, and why should customers prefer your company?

Also, are these companies the only players competing for the share of customers’ wallet? Is there a way you could make sure you know what your competitors are doing in Ireland and that you won’t miss any opportunities?

We came up with this list of suggestions that might help:

1. Get to know other your competitors and analyse their marketing strategies
2. Discover ‘hidden’ competitors you might not have thought about before
3. Find out where you are different from your company
4. Get ideas on what you could improve in your marketing strategy so that you win more business
5. Make sure that the price you charge is in line with the market

Does your current marketing strategy achieve your revenue objectives?

Do you know how to set the right goals to get ‘there’?

Without enquiries from customers that you can convert into sales you will fail – FACT. So do you know precisely where you are going to get your leads from?

Does your current marketing plan really outline your planned steps?
Is it a plan of action to follow to retain and grow your existing customer base?

If you’re not sure about the answers to these questions, think how you could go about these:

• Create a proper marketing strategy for your company
• Get a good handle on how you believe your business should perform in relation to leads and sales
• Know exactly what budget you should be spending and you will be able to plan your time effectively
• See how you can measure the effectiveness of all monies being spent on marketing and precisely on how they will impact your bottom line

Do you know how effective is your your marketing? Which is the half of the marketing costs which you spend uselessly? How much of what you spend on marketing is actually effective?

How many sales a given campaign generates? Are the sales team happy with the quality of leads that marketing supplies?

If you don’t know answers to these questions, you don’t know how much revenue you are leaving on the table.

Therefore, you now probably need the following:

• An understanding of what actually worked and what was a waste of money
• A benchmark for success, showing you where you could have got value for money
• An idea of where to focus your future marketing budget to get results and what you should be looking at when creating your next marketing plan

Knowing who you serve and being aware of your customers’ priorities is the first step of successful marketing. If you now want to maximize the potential of your your company, let’s get to basics – what is it that you offer, and is it of benefit to customers?

That should be why you are in business, no? Here are actually three steps you can now take, if you want to improve marketing of your products:

• Define clearly what products you provide
• Understand how your products benefit customers
• Find out which areas of products you should focus on

With these three simple marketing rules you can be sure you will improve your marketing, whatever it is that you’re selling.

1. Appropriate Structure
There is a special 4mat you should use for all your marketing materials. By answering these 4 questions in this specific order, you will be able to attract the most of customers:

• Why? Give them a reason to read more/contact you etc.
• What? Tell them what the benefits of your products are.
• How? Explain clearly how they can get the benefits.
• What..if? Show them what happens/does not happen if they contact you now.

If you manage to merge all these using a bit of creativity, you will create a marketing piece that will not only attract customers, but they will start to really want to buy your products!

2. Enticing Graphic Design
Unless you are a professional graphic designer yourself, it is always a good idea to have these items (or at least the most important ones) designed by a creative professional who will make sure that the colours match well; they will pick a combination of fonts that best reflect your company’s style, and give you lots of creative ideas you can then use effectively – don’t worry, these services don’t need to be as expensive as they might seem at the first sight.

3. Killer Headline
your business owners quite often ask themselves, “Why do I get no responses from my adverts?” Some of the responses you would get from a marketing expert might include the following;

• Your ad was too small!
• You should have used colour!
• You needed a better design to show it off!
• Your logo is wrong!
• Too much copy!
• Too little copy!
• Call to action was not clear enough!
• Etc.

They could all be right, and most of them could have helped somewhat, to your marketing effectiveness. But the real thing that pulls a response, once you are addressing the correct target market is the headline!

Partners can be one of the most effective ways of getting new business. You can exchange customer lists, refer each other to your contacts or simply brainstorm strategies that would get new business for both of you.

Customers referred to you by partners tend to turn into sales much more easily and will stay with your company much longer.

Similar to sending personalized letters, you need to build a contact list first.

To begin with, think of all contacts you know already – who targets customers but is not a competitor of yours?

Here are a few ideas:

• Go through your mobile phone address book
• Consider all your suppliers
• Think of which of your customers would actually have contacts to their friends who would also like to benefit from your products
• Talk to members of your associations and various organizations
• Look at your customers’ “watering holes” and list those you’ve dealt with personally before

So this is the list to start off with. However, as you approach people you know already, always ask for introductions to their friends in similar industry or with similar interests who could also benefit from cooperation with you.

It does not have to be specifically Ireland, but whatever country you are marketing your product in, it is vital that you identify your customers’

• Desires – what do they really want, because a lot of purchases are based on wants not needs – I mean who NEEDS a Porsche?
• Problems – what pain do they currently have that your offering will ease or cure?

Because when you know these, then you know WHY they will buy, and subsequently, it will be easier to ensure you have more customers. So let’s have a look at what customers’ problems and desires are in general, and then you will define them for each of your own customer groups.

Classify customers’ Desires

In reality, over 90% of purchase decisions are based on people’s desires, not only on “what we need.” I mean, how many of us grew up drinking tap water, yet we all still pay huge sums of money for water in bottles. Yes, we do need liquid to stay alive, but do we really need designer label water?

Classify customers’ Problems

People visit the doctor or dentist either because they have a pain, or to prevent pain. Why would people talk to your company – which problems would make them call you?

But this is just the beginning of the exciting marketing strategy creation. Next you need to look at the product you market and whether it really responds to the problems and desires of your customers.