Marketing Goals
Your marketing goals describe the desired effect on your business that a specific strategy will achieve. Your marketing goals may deal with many different elements of your business. You may wish to increase sales, increase awareness of your business, increase visitors to your web site, increase the stickiness of your site, get more repeat clients... the list goes on and on.
When setting your marketing goals, keep in mind that:
Marketing goals must fit into your overall business goals.
Marketing goals must be realistic.
Marketing goals should be quantifiable, meaning that you can measure them.
Your marketing goals will be achieved by implementing your marketing strategies. Every time you embark on a marketing campaign, you will use one or more strategies to launch and maintain that campaign. However, in order to tell if your strategies are doing anything, you need goals, and you need to be able to "measure" whether or not you are achieving those goals.
To illustrate the above with an example:
Strategy: Run weekly email marketing campaigns for a month, featuring the product.
Measurement: Compare the average monthly sales of the product for the past 6 months to the sales of the same product for the month that the email marketing campaigns were run. If the product sales are statistically higher than the prior sales, your goal has been achieved!
Case Study in Multi Channel Marketing - Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) Training Gym:
A local Chicago based Mixed Martail Arts called Carlson Gracie MMA Team just opened up and needed students to sign up as new members. The staff at Small Business Marketing sat down the MMA gym owners and gather what their needs and spec out the marketing program that best fitted them. We wanted to set out clear goals and explain each elements in the multi channel package. After the meeting, the marketing team decided that Marketing Package 4 was best suited for the small business.
By using multi channel marketing elements in the package, the Mixed Martial Art training gym receive over 90 new members within three months. The email marketing aspect of the package announced the grand opening of the gym. The Text SMS element was able to get up to the minute changes and additions to MMA classes. The SEO portion made sure that new students in the chicagoland area found the gyms website on the top pages of all the search engines. The grass root portion made sure all houses within a 5 miles radius got a flyer on their door about the new gym.
In summary, the MMA gym benefitted greatly from the marketing package. Working together to build a solid marketing plan, Small Business Marketing and Carlson Gracie MMA Team, knocked out the competition per say and won and still winning the marketing battle.
Turn Your Marketing dollar in Increase Sales:
Everybody is saying now is the time to engage consumers. Reports demonstrate that reducing marketing spending in today's economy results in lost customers. You need your customers to know you are viable in the marketplace and spur them into spending their precious dollars with you. But, how do you market to consumers with clear, compelling messages? How do you turn your marketing dollars into increase in Sales?
Avoid the "Head in the sand response":
This economy presents you with a unique opportunity to market your brand and rise above the herd. Allthough somewhat counter intuitive, spending money to stay in front of your clients - reminding them of the value you bring, and reassuring them that you stand ready to serve them - is more important than ever. Remember, just as you feel less certain about the future, so do many of your consumers. This is the perfect time to provide some clarity to them, based on the value and stability your small business can bring to them. Todays consumers are driven by value. That value does not necessarily mean inexpensive; they just need to be engaged with your small business brand enough to believe they are receiving real value for their dollar spent.
Stay in front of your consumer:
This may seem logical and straightforward, however, we find that many organizations are cutting back on marketing spend and that could be a fatal decision.
Motivate Consumers:
If you are like most small business, your commitment to understanding the consumer is only outweighed by your desire to find solutions that reach them. Multi channel marketing like our service approaches will give you the best results. In the virtual and tech times we live in, do not lose sight of the importance of remaining physically and literally in the hands of your consumer. Your call to action should come from many marketing channels such like email marketing, sms text marketing, SEO and Pay per click, to ensure you reach the largest base possible. Choosing small business marketing channel wisely, carefully planning your campaign sequence and doing it for the least amount of money for the greatest return is vital, so lets take a hard look at popular marketing channels.
Email Marketing for small business:
Email marketing is cheap and we do not have the money for other types of marketing - this is a statement that we here at Pure Small Business Marketing hear often. True, it is less expensive to send an email than to use other channels, and it is one of the methods you should use however, email marketing is only truly viable when interlaced with a dynamic multi channel marketing campaign.
37% of consumers patronize a new brand and 68% are prompted to renew loyalty to a brand after receiving contact via direct mail.
Direct mail that includes a plastic card or something in it:
One of the best strategies is to start your marketing push with a direct mail campaign that includes a plastic card. Why? While not all consumers want to interact in the same manner, a portion of consumers state they are most likely to respond when reached via direct mail.
Some consumers say they are more likely to open mail if they feel something in the package. One of our retail clients for small business marketing mails hundreds of thousands of these packages per month and they are seeing a solid 15% response rate on their promotinal campaigns using a 20 mil plastic card in a direct card in a direct mail piece. With these compelling numbers, the ROI in putting a card in your mail piece far surpasses mailing without cards or other options like email.
Website Design:
Mail and email should not stand alone. To truly retain and grow your market and engage your consumers, your successful campaign must be based on ongoing integrated communication. Use direct mail combined with email to drive consumers to your web pages to increase the "stickiness" of your program. Altering the channels you use and ensuring that each complements the other will motivate your consumers to respond to your promotions and marketing messages. In todays marketplace, you cannot touch a client just once or use the same method over and over and expect success. Interlacing email marketing, sms text marketing, online promotions, great website design and direct mail with cards will deliver proven results.