Is your marketing multi-directional?
There is no doubt that a number of clients determine the success and growth rate of your business development. If not for your clientele, how will a business owner even generate revenue? Being short of clients is one of the major problems why businesses fail, for the business soon runs out of cash. There are various reasons as to why you don’t have enough clients, it may be because your products and services are not valuable enough, or maybe you’re unable to optimize marketing.
Now, what do we understand by optimized marketing? Optimized marketing incorporates hiring efficient and reliable salespersons, spreading the word as far as possible, and ensuring follow back. That’s a broad definition of optimized marketing. You may wonder, “How a business owner can achieve that?” It is pretty simple, invest in marketing! Invest in the sales process and salespeople. Remember you can only secure clients when you’ve scored a powerful sales team. One of the simplest ways to succeed in business is to have a sound and robust sales department, as they will maximize your sales and will secure clients for you.
Another thing you have to make sure of is that you have multiple routes for marketing and not one-directional, this way you can create new opportunities and new inquiries for your business, and also this increases the number of ways a client can approach your business. Just to give hints of possible multiple routes, here, I am listing a few major ones. This listing will help you to trigger your thinking to figure out suitable multiple marketing routes.
- Offline Advertisements – Well, there are dozens of places to show your advertisements from where you can get leads, and hence clients/customers. These places could be newspapers, magazines, business directory, classifieds, banners, roadside hoardings, automobile stickers, wall paintings, partial side of “no-parking” etc. boards, small stickers on stationaries, and whatnot.
- Online Advertisements – Just like offline advertisements, the internet world also gives dozens of opportunities to place our adverts. For example – web directories, social bookmarks, social networking sites, banner ads, online classifieds, online news portals, online magazines, ads on blogs, forums, wikis, press releases, and most important search engines through various options like PPC, CPM, CPA, etc.
- Search Engine Optimization – The importance is SEO is worth mentioning as a separate point equal to the offline and online advertisement. The reason for such a huge importance of SEO is because it results in a huge number of leads PLUS a huge conversion ratio. The beauty lies in huge conversion. Whatever traffic that lands on a website are so targeted that having a conversion ratio of 2% to 10% is a normal thing; provided SEO is done correctly.
- Network Marketing – Though network marketing is a comparatively new concept yet it is highly popular. The logic applied behind this method is based on leveraging other people’s time and effort. Robert Kiyosaki advised in his book “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” to leverage the time, money, and labor of other people if you want to become rich. The network marketing model is based on this principle only.
- And here is a special one – Help the Needy and Make Him Friend – Before explaining it further, let the give the credit to the inventor of this wonderful marketing technique. I have learned this technique from Mr. T. S. Madaan. He is one of the most popular motivational speakers in India, awarded by the president of India, and won several country-level awards for best insurance selling. He says… always carry handy tools while you are traveling. For example, carry first aid box, threads, needle, buttons, plier, screwdriver, hammer, chisels, Allen key, etc. Who knows who need them while traveling along with you and you have a chance to make a new friend. This new friend will love to become your customer whenever he needs your product. This is a very simple and extremely effective technique. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND it.
Besides this, you have to think carefully about what else you can do. Marketing is an everlasting thing. You have got to invest in marketing on -on and on a basis.
Does one of your clients make 30 percent of your turnover?
Well, it often happens that business owners have one giant in the industry or one big hitter because of whom their business’ thriving. Everything seems to be nice and jolly, however, the reality is different than what you see. If that one client is outsourcing you and you are inclined to be dependent on him, it will adversely affect your company when he leaves you.
So what’s the solution? Glad you asked again. The answer is Diversification.
The more you diversify, the less you’re dependent on one client. Because securing big clients is a sign of your capability but giving it a rational thought, you’ll know that having two to three relatively smaller clients will supplement any potential loss if that big client were to pull off.
Do you keep track of the sales matrix?
What is the sales matrix? Sales matrix means those figure which is related to sales. For example –
- Daily New Prospects/Leads – It is important to have a good note of… how many new prospects or leads your business is getting. If your daily leads count is low then it simply means you need to generate more leads. You need to reach a wider target market or make your target audience more aware of your brand or whatever it requires. This figure should also be recorded for a week, month, and year.
- Daily Conversion – It means… how many new customers you get out of leads you get on a daily basis. This is a very important matrix now. It will clearly show how effective your sales process is. The higher the conversion, the better it is. If your conversion ratio is low then you need to think over the further enhancement of product, better price, better sales approach, better salespersons, better convincing stuff, or whatever it may require. This figure should also be recorded for a week, month, and year.
- Daily Sales Amount – This is another important matrix which every business has to pay attention to. It may happen that you are getting a high number of daily leads, and a high conversion ratio, but still daily amount collection of sales is still insufficient. Maybe your buyers are buying low price tag offerings, maybe your buyers are just trying samples, maybe your pricing is still inappropriate. It may happen that someday your sales amount is high and one someday it is very low. Maybe the sale of high sales amount day happened just by coincidence. The daily sales amount is such an important factor to consider that it can either make your business or can keep you in the custody of your business. This figure should also be recorded for a week, month, and year.
- Return Customers Ratio – the best form of marketing is “word of mouth” marketing, and this can be achieved when you have lots of fully satisfied customers. A satisfied customer always tends to buy again. Hence, your return customer ratio has to be very nice. You want to upgrade your after-sale service, further the quality of your offers (products/services), keep a better relationship with your buyers, and whatever you can do to have higher returning customers.
Having a keen vigil over such a matrix can bring some good impact on business. EVERY (without exception) successful business keeps a very close eye on these matrices.