Customer Service Tops the List
Most marketers wonder from time to time if there is something they could be doing differently to improve their results.
The answer is, “Yes! Many options are available for improving your marketing results and in turn your profits.”
As a marketer, you must remember your goal is to improve your profits, not your sales. You don’t want to reduce your bottom line with big marketing expenditures. So, as always, you want to focus on selling to your current clients, since it costs only five times more money to market to them and 10 times more to gain a new client.
Following are seven ways to increase your profits through marketing:
o Provide outstanding customer service. Eighty percent of clients leave a business not because of high prices but because of poor service. It pays to go the extra mile for your current clients.
Example: A friend of mine bought a BMW at a particular dealer and received poor service. She will no longer use that dealer not because of price but because of service.
– Headline Should
Be Focus Of Ad
o Focus on the headline when creating an ad. If you don’t catch the prospect with the headline, you won’t catch them at all.
Example: If you were sponsoring a contest, your ad headline could read, “Enter and Win!” A better headline that would catch more attention would be, “Enter and Win $500,000.”
o Create a marketing plan at the beginning of the year and have the strength and patience to stick to it. Straying from the plan will never get you where you want to be. Learn from your mistakes and improve next year’s plan accordingly.
o Create your marketing message for one person, not the masses, and offer solutions to problems.
o Your service need not be new and improved but should be exactly what your client needs.
Example: Survey your clients and find out what they like best about your company and what other services they would like to see offered at your company. By listening and then doing what your clients want, you will have spent your marketing dollars judiciously.
– Results Reflect Total
Marketing Efforts
o Remember, it is not the one press release or one trade show that increased your profits or got you the new client, but the compilation of your marketing efforts.
o Last but not least, make sure all your marketing is honest and does not exaggerate your abilities. If you exaggerate your abilities, your client will be sure to find out in the long run.
The above are just seven ways you can improve your marketing results which affect your profits. Many more exist.
Be sure to use the resources available to you to increase your knowledge such as books, seminars, marketing associations or other avenues you know about but haven’t explored. You have nothing to lose but money and clients if you don’t hone your marketing skills.
Scherer is director of marketing for Grice, Lund & Tarkington, LLP, CPAs, a full-service accounting and business consulting firm with offices in San Diego.
