It’s surprisingly common for companies to be mystified as to what their marketing goals should be. To point them in the right direction, we start by asking these questions:
What marketing have you done to date? Has it been profitable?
If not, has it generated response, but not sales? In that case, either the traffic is unqualified, or – more often the case – your website (or whatever else you rely on to close sales) needs work.
If on the other hand, response is low, you need to change marketing tactics. Further digging is required to determine whether the problem is the media, the message, the offer, or some combination.
Another area to investigate is costs. Would your current marketing be profitable if your costs were lower? Sometimes, you can trim expenses enough to make the difference.
Would larger volume help? For instance, it generally costs about the same to email 100 people as 10,000 or 100,000. If your email list is small, what can you do to get similar subscribers?
How often are you currently contacting your best customers? Most companies leave a tremendous amount of money on the table by not contacting their best buyers often enough.
It’s all too common for companies to set their marketing strategy without any real analysis of their current situation, or goals for what they want to achieve. Determining whether your most important priority is to generate more leads or to close more sales … to increase response or to cut costs … will ensure that you put your marketing budget to the best possible use.
