Quite simply, one that works!
The trick is to figuring what “works” means and what to put in place to give your Marketing Strategy every chance of success.
First things first: Decide on a budget that your business is comfortable spending to bring in new customers. And this is the kicker… It’s not always as simple as spending more money! Your new customers will be bringing in revenue to your business which will give you a quick idea of Return on Investment (ROI). If you want to bring in 100 new customers that would bring in say $10,000 of revenue, what marketing budget do you think you’ll need to bring that in? Are you comfortable spending $50 per new customer, which will provide your break-even at $5000 of marketing spend for $5000 of new revenue.
Budget decided: Now it’s time to figure out what your marketing strategy is going to look like. You want 100 new customers but how do you get that? You’ll have a rough idea of how many enquiries you may need per sale, which starts to build your cost per enquiry (CPE) benchmark. 5 enquiries per sale will tell you that your $5000 spend needs to net you 500 enquiries. Which marketing channels are going to give you a CPE of $10? Adwords and Facebook can be quite cost effective but you may need to include some above the line marketing to accompany that. There’s plenty of questions to ask, but keeping it simple is generally the way to go.
The marketing mix: Including Adwords and Facebook can be the most cost effective way of reaching your target market, but there are ways you can increase the effectiveness of your digital channels – Traditional marketing. Adding a radio campaign can greatly influence the performance of digital channels. Think about it – Someone hears your ad, thinks they like your product/service, wants to find out more so they quickly Google your business. If you’ve got a solid SEO position, or Adwords ensuring you’re up the top then your customer will find you easily. It creates better SEO performance because Google will notice more people searching for you, and will create a cheaper cost per click in Adwords because of the more specific search.
The message: Be specific on what product/service you want to sell more of. The simpler the message the easier it is to tell your audience what to do. If you’ve made it as easy as possible for your audience to understand what it is you do, then you’ve got the best chance of your audience acting on it. Keep it simple.
What if it doesn’t work: Remember, we’ve decided on a budget that the business is comfortable in spending. One campaign shouldn’t be the make or break so even if you didn’t get everything you hoped for you’ll be able to take learnings from the campaign. Maybe the messaging wasn’t quite right. Maybe your audience doesn’t listen to radio so TV may need to be included next time. The best marketing comes from knowing what your audience wants to see/hear and knowing where they are.
The biggest thing is to try and ensure you’re giving your campaign the best chance to succeed. If the budget allows, a good marketing mix of traditional and digital marketing channels will help. And learn from the campaign so that you can adjust, optimise and get better results from the next campaign!
