Featured Person: Chad Root, Spearhead Sales and Marketing, President/Founder
How Promotion Works in the Relationship Machine
CR: I’m Chad with Spearhead and thanks for joining me again. Today I’m going to talk about the term that most people think of when talking about marketing, and that is “advertising”. They think about running an ad, going to a trade show, or even sending out an eBlast. The interesting thing about this whole thing is the process. People have great ideas on what they want to offer a potential or current client, but they’re unclear on what they want that client to do in return. The key here is a call to action (CTA). It feels like the process sometimes is a little backward, so I’m going to give you an alternative way to think about advertising and marketing.
Promotions Within a System
I look at marketing as a system. It’s an integrative sales and marketing system. When I think about advertising I like to use the term “promotion”. The first thing to think about is the audience (who?). You may want to promote to existing contacts, which are people that are already in your database or advocacy clients. You may decide to host an event and invite one of your advocacy clients. They could give a vote of confidence in your favor to display how well you’ve served them. You may want to promote to new contacts. Typically when folks think of advertising they think of it in terms of new clients.
When you know the audience, it helps you connect the promotion to a very specific offer. That offer could be towards a long-term client, to trade in old equipment for new equipment. Or maybe it could be an offer to a new client that will make a great 1st impression for you, such as an ROI tool. In the marketing world, people refer to this as a direct response. They mean what is the goal of this communication? Is it brand recognition, goal-oriented, or direct response? If you shoot for a direct response, your advertisement should contain specifics and target a certain type of person. When it’s all said and done, they may or may not have taken the bait. But in the long run, our goal is a meaningful 1st impression.
The third piece of promotion is being able to track it. We use technology that allows us to monitor and view how customers initiated contact. We will know which eBlast performed the best, brought contacts into our database and continued to revisit our site. It shows you which promotions resonate the best with clients. The point of tracking allows you to determine where you’re going to target your budget. So as you’re designing this system, you now have deep knowledge of how your system works. The next step is entering the test and measure phase. You’re not sure which promotion will bring or provide you the best results in the most efficient manner. Through this testing, you’re able to differentiate which promos work well, such as paid eBlasts, ads, trade shows, or magazine spots. Identify those things and adjust your budget accordingly (75% towards the most effective way, the remaining 25% you can test new things).
Notes
- Who is your audience?
- New contacts (typical objective).
- Connect your promotion to a SPECIFIC offer (Direct Response Approach).
- Tracking
- Choose promotional channels that have a high concentration of your targeted contacts for a higher ROI.
- Test, measure, and adjust.
- A Good rule of thumb – try to budget 75% toward proven channels and 25% toward new channels.
- In summary – choose your audience, what can you offer, track the results.
Conclusion
So that’s going to wrap it up in
Where are your targeted contacts looking for opportunities and insight? That’s where you want to be. Promote your offers and drive traffic to your website for conversion through direct marketing, search engine marketing, advertising, and PR. Thanks for watching and you can contact us at info@spearheadsalesmarketing.com.
