Are you wasting your marketing dollars?
As we know there are so many types of marketing activities we can choose from to generate more business. Unfortunately, many local business owners and/or advisers who do invest in marketing for their firm, spend it on the wrong type of activities.
Brand marketing
Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Microsoft, Apple, BMW, Mercedes, Hyundai, Coles, Woolworths and on the list goes – these are huge organisations and everyone knows them. Why? Because over many years they have saturated us with their ‘brand marketing’. They have huge budgets and they continue to try and cement their brand into our psyche.
Their marketing is all about building their brand and/or promoting specific opportunities (sales promotions) for us to purchase their products and services.
Ultimately, selling their products and services is important to them. However, they are also aiming their marketing at the long game. A major part of their strategy is branding – embedding their brand and image into our minds, so that when we are ready to buy, we choose them first. They use the tried and true ‘repetition is the mother of learning’ philosophy and for them, it works – most of the time.
Unfortunately, many small business owners try to copy the big guys and end up wasting their money. Money that most simply don’t have to spend.
While getting your business brand known is important over the long haul, what’s more important is getting the best return on investment (ROI) you can from every dollar you invest.
Direct response marketing
As a local small business operator, your budget just doesn’t stretch as far as the big names. The only answer for small businesses is to ensure you maximise your ROI – invest $1.00 to get back $1.50, $2.00, $5.00 or $25.00. Every dollar you spend needs to be tracked and measured because if you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it. Brand marketing alone for you is next to useless. You are much better off growing brand awareness as a consequence of, a byproduct of, your other focused marketing activities. The only type of marketing and/or advertising, you should invest in isdirect response marketing.
Why? Amongst other advantages, direct response marketing can be measured accurately. Meaning you’ll always know your ROI.
What is direct response marketing?
Well in its simplest form, as the name implies, it revolves around making a specific offer and having a strong ‘call to action’ for people to respond to.
Often referred to as ‘information marketing’, ‘content marketing’, ‘permission marketing’ or ‘education marketing’, primarily it is about motivating very targeted prospects to contact you, by offering them highly sought after, and therefore attractive, information or education.
The information must be valuable and you must give away some secrets, not all, but some.
Effectively, you are being invited in by your prospect and asked to provide advice.
The basic components are:
- Selecting the best matched target market.
- Selecting the right media in which to advertise.
- Making an offer that the target market is most likely to want and which will be hard to resist.
- A mechanism for the response.
- Strong reasons for the market to respond to the offer/s now (calls to action).
- Systematic, repeat follow up and offers to meet.
- There must be tracking and measurement.
You may take a direct approach, offering them the opportunity to get hold of your information/education, at your meeting. In this case, the specific action they need to take is to, “call your number and book a meeting”.
In most cases however, an indirect approach can work better. Here, you promote and offer information, education and knowledge, in the form of eBooks, white papers or free reports, which could be delivered online or in physical form.
This strategy allows you to build rapport, to build the ‘know, like and trust’ with your market and should be combined with a strong, systematic follow up system, to actually meet with you.
Direct response marketing can work for every small business, including advice businesses, you just need a little innovation. There are many ways to implement direct response marketing strategies. Here is just one example …
- Target market – local small business owners with $2m to $10m revenue.
- Offer a free report or eBook such as “5 mistakes almost every business owner makes and what to do about it” or “How to guarantee more money in your life and keep it”.
- Mechanism – offer the free report or eBook via a landing page on your website, where they can access it for free in exchange for some contact details, such as their name, email address and mobile phone number.
- Advertising media – Google or Facebook (targeting business owners within 25km of your business location).
Call to action for free report: “This report outlines mistakes which are costing business owners thousands of dollars every year and in some cases, forcing them into bankruptcy – and yet all of this can be stopped, almost Immediately, by just following these simple but critical actions. Download this report now, before it’s too late!”
Call to action inside free report: “Call or email for a complimentary ‘Personalised Strategy Discovery’ consultation – only available for specially selected local business owners, who will also receive a copy of their ‘Personal Action Plan’, that we will create at the completion of our consultation. This consultation and action plan is valued at $990.00 but spaces are limited, so call us today to see how these strategies can work for you.
Systematic follow up: Using an ‘autoresponder’ email system, set a series of emails that go on to further explain and highlight the problems and issues business owners (they) face, and allude to these solutions, and importantly your expertise in providing solutions. Each email prompts them to call or email you to book a consultation.
If the opportunity is large enough, you might supplement this sequence of online information and contacts with the delivery of information offline, such as books (your own or others) or other printed material.
Somewhere along this communication chain, pick up the phone, introduce yourself and compellingly offer the consultation again.
Track and measure. Using Google or Facebook Analytics and your own data, you can accurately track your results. The number of people viewing your advert, number of people visiting your website, number of report requests, number of consultations gained directly from the report, number of consults from outbound phone calls, and of course the number of clients and revenue.
Over time, you can refine your approach to improve your results.
As Matt Zagula, a highly successful US Financial Adviser, says in his book ‘No BS Trust Based Marketing’ (along with his coauthor, Dan S Kennedy), “The key to this approach is that the material you provide must have significant value, it should be written or produced in a conversational tone and be geared towards developing a relationship based on two critical things:
1. I’m a good guy who is here to help you and not jam a product down your throat.
2. I’m an expert and all this information I just gave to you proves it”.
Direct response marketing simply works
With sound planning, the right matching of markets with your offers and attractive copywriting, direct response marketing is a proven marketing approach. And you know exactly where every dollar is going and what your ROI is.
Of course, just as is the case with almost all marketing, it may not work all of the time in every circumstance. Trial and error, testing and adjustments will be necessary – but done strategically, this can be a most powerful method for attracting new ‘ideal client’ opportunities.
The team at Capstone can help you with your client attraction and marketing strategies, including ideas, tools and resources. To find out how contact:
Kym Turner
Senior Practice Manager
Capstone Financial Planning
P: 03 8622 0719
E: k.turner@capstonefp.com.au
