5. What Marketing Methods Does Your Competitor Use?

And is it working?  If they continue to use one or two methods consistently, it is generally a sign  that these methods are working. 

This can save you a lot of time and money.  Instead of experimenting with unproven methods for your industry, look at what both local and national companies are doing.  If you look deeply, you may find that some of their most successful methods are the less expensive ways.

6. Track your marketing efforts.  One big mistake that a business will make in marketing is not tracking their results.  Many times when clients come to me and ask how to save their business, I ask them what marketing methods they are using, how much they are paying for advertising, and which ones are working.  Most know what they are using, some know how much they are paying, but almost none know which ones are working.  Do you know how many people came in from the phone book last month?

Set up some way to track how each new client learned about you.  At least make sure that new customers, phone callers, etc are asked how they learned about you.  Then collect that information.  By the end of the month you should have totals of:

• How many people learned about you from each one of your marketing methods
• How many of those people actually became customers
• How much each new customer bought from you

Using simple math, you can then find out how much it cost you per customer from each marketing mix.  For example, you may find it cost you $100.00 per customer for your newspaper campaign in one paper, $125.00 per customer in another newspaper, $175.00 per customer from yellow pages, and $25.00 per customer from your website.  Where would you want your customers to come from?  Of course it would be more profitable for the $25.00 customer!  Put more of your marketing money there and maybe cut back on the $175.00 cost per customer.

Then you can find out how profitable the customers are and how well your marketing methods are working by using math to find out if the customers are costing you money or making a profit by how much they actually spend.

There are a lot of other things you could learn about the results of your marketing. 

How well are each of your marketing methods working for you?

Tomorrow we will discuss how much time and money should you spend on marketing!  Now go out and have a profitable day!