Do you have a marketing strategy?
What is a marketing strateg
y?
Your marketing strategy is the core of your marketing plan.
It includes your target market. Add to that your core product – which directly matches your target market needs and is customized to fulfill their wants.
Now the next step is crucial.
Do you have a plan to effectively gather customers AND then systematically move them through a sales process where you continue to sell them MORE.
Now I was intentionally vague by saying only MORE. The MORE can be another product, it can be a regular on-going service, it can be an up-sell, a down-sell or a cross-sell.
Again look at the crucial step above – too many organizations only focus their marketing on the first stage – trying to find that magic formula to effectively gather customers. That is only 20% of the reason for success for a business. Like the Pareto Principle – 80% of the profits will be in the sales process that gets you to sell more. Examples are everywhere – the automobile industry – sell a car and then they sell you warranty, then service, then parts. Bill Gates became rich selling you Windows, then office productivity tools, then Windows again, and again, and again.
See a trend here? One way to make your business more successful is to have a product that needs to be replaced at various intervals. So if your product does not – then find a way.
I see a glaring mistake based on that exact principle happening all over the country – but organizations are trying to fix it – some better than others. And it is making their industry struggle since they did not set up their business to sell again and again to the same customer. This is the post-secondary education industry.
They thought since they had a steady stream of customers (students from high school) coming to their doors that they did not need to sell to them again. Yet now with raising costs, their primary product profitability is at risk – and it is getting harder and harder for them to gather new customers as choices increase for students exiting high school. If they had put in place a system to re-educate people through-out their career and built that into their sales process they would be much better off right now.
Lessons learned . ..
Don’t let it happen in your business.
