The Right Mix: Experiments in Marketing

It can be difficult to find the right fit for your company’s marketing plan, but that doesn’t mean you should succumb to a one-size-fits all mentality. Marketing your product or service requires a certain amount of finesse – especially when branching out to a new segment of consumers. Give your plan some wiggle room for testing and experimenting. These are a few guidelines we follow when tweaking marketing plans:

• Always keep your goals at the forefront of the plan. If you’re moving in the direction of your ultimate goal (increasing sales, response rates, awareness, etc.) then you’ve got the right momentum – you may just arrive at it a differently than anticipated. When you keep your goals in mind, it’s much easier to hone in on what’s effective. Sometimes the most creative (and effective) marketing comes by taking a roundabout path… just don’t get too distracted by the new territory, always keep an eye on the final destination.

• Nuances can make a world of difference. If your email marketing campaign isn’t producing the results you want, don’t scrap email marketing. Instead, look at your message. Is your tone appropriate? Are these customers looking to you for a light-hearted message or do they want a just-business rundown? If the tone’s right, consider calls to action. Does the customer know what to do? Subtle changes and guiding directions can make any tool more effective.

• Try new techniques, but know when to move on. There’s a careful balance to strike when testing new methods. You don’t want to bail too early before giving the process a chance to eek out results, but also you don’t want to be caught stubbornly pushing along an effort that’s not gonna budge. When you’re not seeing results, use your best judgment and don’t be afraid to redirect your efforts.

• Have realistic expectations. While you may be primed and ready for customers to start knocking down your door within 24 hours of implementing a new marketing tool, recognize that most plans work on a slow-build concept. While things may start out slow at first, committing to a plan that’s producing results is likely develop into a steady, long-lived stream of business.

Keep adjusting your plan until you find the combination that maximizes your marketing dollar’s impact. Testing new methods and refining messages can be frustrating, but it’s essential for creating the right marketing mix.

Cost Effective Marketing Can Minimize Economic Distress

The concern of a recession is beginning to become a reality as businesses look to cut spending, decrease overhead and bunker down during the possible economic turbulence. Despite the old adage that it is best to spend your way out of a recession, many business owners are preparing to freeze their marketing budgets.

The good news is that cutting marketing budget doesn’t have to negatively affect the your bottom line. By diverting deflated budgets to more cost-effective mediums, companies can boost their marketing power while reducing advertising expense. There are low-cost solutions to fit a variety of marketing budgets, including email marketing, search engine optimization, PR, professional web presence, pay-per-click and mobile marketing, not to mention the value of ensuring good relationships with existing customers.

For most companies that weren’t open during the last recession, the impact of a struggling economy may be more difficult to handle. This is why it’s important for a company to have its marketing forces armed and ready, so if the recession hits they can immediately take charge and begin generating new sales. Preparedness is key to competitive advantage.”

The Direct Marketing Association estimates that email marketing ROI will hit $45.65 for every dollar spent this year. When compared with traditional direct mail marketing, email marketing allows a company to reduce the production costs and focus more of their advertising budget directly on the consumer. Starting a direct mail campaign will incur significant costs and the response ratio is usually much lower than with online campaigns.

Moving your marketing budget online offers great advantages. With online marketing, a company can view detailed statistics about their campaign including how many people have opened their email, geographic distribution, click-thru-rates, ad effectiveness and conversions. Traditional marketing including television and print doesn’t offer this advantage. Close observation of these metrics help ensure the company receives premium ROI.

Developing a strong online marketing program allows companies direct interaction with potential customers and powerful marketing at a fraction of traditional advertising costs. Interactive marketing as an extension of a company’s current advertising efforts has proven invaluable in both strong and difficult economic times. Interactive marketing should be considered when business owners find economic impact is impeding their marketing budget.