Is That Marketing Tool A Good Idea Or A Cheap One?

WaltG

A professional salesman, one who knows his product/service, is the life blood of any orginization. The problem is so many career salesmen are not professional and give the whole title a negative image.

Have to disagree with you on that one.
LEADS are the lifeblood of any organization. Without LEADS, salesmen have nothing to sell. A good marketing manager can grow your business a lot faster than a good salesmen.
Only took me 19 years to figure that one out.
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Marc Sylvain
Sylvain Contracting

Thanks for this recent post Marc.

As a marketing guy, I couldn’t agree with you more.

Without an over abundance of leads, you’re dead in the water. You’re desperately scrambling for work… any work. And, home owners can smell desperation a mile away. They will use it to beat up a weak salesman on price.



And…

I’ve noticed lots of marketing ideas tossed around on this forum:

(Marketing= everything you do to generate a lead. Sales= everything you do to convert that lead into a job)

·Online leads programs

·Paying a cash incentive for referrals

·Pay-per-click and SEO campaigns

·Door Hangers and Neighborhood Flyers and signs

·Direct Mail

·TV and Radio Ads

·Strategic Alliances

·Advertising Specialty items such as pens, fridge magnets, coffee cups, t-shirts, etc.



I’m sure I missed some…

Any of these or even all of these are good ideas…

The question is: Are they good ideas for your business?

When I talk with clients about which marketing tools they should use or which marketing opportunities they should spend their time and money on, the two questions I always ask them to consider are:


1. Does this get you to your goal (such as landing 5 new clients in x new market by 2nd quarter)?
2. Is it related to your target market(s)?


If the answer is no to either or both, it's not usually a good use of resources. This is especially important when you have limited time (and/or money) to spend on marketing.


Always choose very carefully and don't just do something because it's easy or cheap. For example, don't buy into a cheap, no time or effort on your part, online leads program just because the salesman keeps calling if you aren't certain that the leads produced are in your target market.


What questions do you ask before you pull the trigger on your marketing and advertising time, effort, and money?

Ed the Roofer

Walt,

I think a more appropriate question would be; "What ways do you monitor each one of your marketing efforts to see if they had begun to achieve your designated goal for leads".

Sometimes, you do not know in advance which trigger needs to be pulled initially. Especially if that person or company has limited experience with how to properly market their product.

Some marketing efforts which receive phenominal succes rates at one time, may fall completely flat on their so called faces during another campaign.

It is the test of repetiveness, and reviewing the success ratios and then converting those statistics into a leads aquired per dollar spent and then adjusting the sold leads and/or followed up lead ratios to see where you stand.

It would not make financial sense to acquire 400 leads per month, if you could only follow up on 40 of them. Or would it? The dollars spent and the income received from your efforts are the only way to know for certain.

Ed

Susan Betz

The marketing/sales distinction is interesting. In our business, I do the marketing, my husband does the sales. I can't close! But I can figure out where to get the biggest bang for the advertising buck. All ads have his phone number on them.

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Fences of Distinction, Ocala, FL
http://www.fencesofdistinction.com

Ed the Roofer

Walt,

The few posts you have are of good quality and indicative of your resoucefulness.

Why don't you stick around a little longer to participate, at least for the questions you pose?

Ed

WaltG

Sorry Ed... guess I did kinda got started in the tear-off and left a mess all over the yard...

Too many projects, too little time.

Seems that I've fallen victim to your point:

Good point. It goes back to the first question to ask yorself about marketing or advertising opportunities: What's my goal, how many jobs, how much revenue, how much profit, how much of a back-log am I trying to build?

And, you're absolutely right, until you have a history for your business, where you've tracked and tested all your marketing, and track all the numbers, you never really know what works. You're taking educated guesses.

What I've discovered is that the more I know about my target market, the more I know about what problems they have, what they're trying to accomplish, how they make buying decisions, how much they're willing to pay... I'm removing as much of that up-front marketing risk and making better marketing decisions.

And, I'm all for testing with as little time, money, and effort any new marketing program.

But, I still take my testing standard back to my first two questions:
Does it get me to where I want to go?
Is it in a market where I have an advantage and can make money?

Without those two being a loud, clear "Yes", no need to pull the trigger on that marketing or advertising spend... no matter how good of a deal it sounds... For example spend bucks on a Val-Pak coupon mailer in a zip code that doesn't match my market--- homes either too expensive, too new, too inexpensive...

I sure don't wanna test something I'm not doing in the first place.

But, everything that I do decide to spend money on doing to generate leads, I know I must track and test so i make better and better decisions.

Ed the Roofer

At what point does anyone truly have enough time to do everything that they want to.

I believe that the ultimate level of success is when we are happy with the appropriate balance between business and family/friends. That balance is different for everyone.

Glad you came back to check out your thread.

Ed