Over the last couple of weeks I’ve had a number of conversations with people about optimising their marketing mix. This is a good thing to do right now; it’s the start of the year, things are a always a little slower right now, so take the time to have a look at everything with a fresh set of eyes.
When looking at your marketing start with your target customer. Who are you selling to? Which customer segment is your product the best suited to? Get specific, zero in on an age range (within 5 years), sex, household income or business size, and think about psychographic dimensions such as values, attitudes, or interests. You need to know everything you can about them. The more you can build up an accurate picture of them the more you can decide which marketing, promotional ideas or media have the greatest change of working.
Once you’re clear on your target customer start to refocus your market, eliminate the media that is too broad and really zero in on your target customer. Also use this as an opportunity to renegotiate rates with your media suppliers. There should be some opportunities out there right now. Lastly as a generalisation we are recommending our clients upweight their online spend. It’s well known that this is a more effective spend per dollar than other media. I’m not suggesting 100% online but if you’re spending 5% of your media online I would consider moving this to 10 or 20%.
The important thing to do with all of your promotional campaigns is to keep a close track of what you do and the results generated so you can analyse and understand the success. Over time you will develop a base of knowledge around what activities generate a better return on your marketing investment. What you don’t want to do is to keep doing the same things over and over again as ultimately your returns will begin to decline as you wear out customers with the same concept.
We recommend is that you keep 70 to 80% of your marketing spending focused around approaches where you are confident about the results and keep 20 to 30% for testing and trying new things. When these work you can spend more but don’t risk you whole budget on a new approach. Read the post
how to get a better return on your marketing for a more in depth discussion around marketing ROI.
Lastly we also advocate a strong emphasis on protecting and developing the loyalty of your existing customers. Don’t solely focus on new customers. Your existing customers are the life blood of your business. Today is a fantastic time to target new customers as more people than ever will be testing the market to see if they can find better value. The flip side is that your customers are being targeted. So before you double your emphasis on new customers make sure you are putting in the right effort to ensure your existing customers are delighted with your business.
To put this into perspective, a resent US survey completed by
CustomerThink.com indicated that 87% of people have discontinued business with a company after a negative experience. This figure has increased by 28% over two years. However 58% of consumers will always or often pay more for a better customer experience during a down economy. So get it right and you will be rewarded get it wrong and you will be punished quickly!
So to optimise your marketing mix; think about who your target customer is, focus your marketing on them, look for some sharp media deals and try some new things. But most importantly don’t forget ensure that you’re focused on delivering outstanding service and communicating to your existing customer base.
For more information on how InsideOut could assist you to complete a marketing review
contact us.