It’s June already! So, how is this year playing out?

• Are your sales growing as planned? 
• Are your employees solving customers’ problems?
• Are customers pleased with your products and your high levels of personalized service?
• How many new customers have you added?

It’s not too late to fix strategies that aren’t working and to invest more into those that are showing good results. 

Marketing is all about having the right products and services with the right message, at the right price, at the right time and place for the customer. Should one of the variables be out of place, it is likely you’ll miss a sale.

Let’s focus for a moment on the marketing message. 

• Is it written to the customer?  
  • What problem do you solve for them? Tell them!
  • Will this product or service – exceed their expectations, as well as save them time and money?  Tell them!
  • Will this help them provide their customers with better products/services? Tell them!
• Is your message reaching the decision maker?
  • Follow-up the marketing with a phone call to the decision maker. This is an opportunity to identify questions and close the sale.
• How frequently are you sending this message?
  • Research has proven that most of us are exposed to a marketing message at least four times, before we even pay attention to it. The experts call it frequency, referring to how many times the target audience is exposed to a specific message in a specific time span.
  • Marketing is not a one and done effort.  It is an on-going strategic execution.
  • Create a marketing calendar with specific dates and products to remind customers and potential customers that you are in the business of solving their problems.
• Do you have a marketing plan and a budget?
  • Marketing is an investment in the future of your business. Create an annual marketing budget. It can be a percentage of sales or a fixed number. Money is precious, so develop strategies to maximize the impact of the investment.
  • There are many marketing tools that cost little to nothing, such as email and social media campaigns and carefully created news and feature stories with the local media. 

Just a thought, while you’re on the phone with the customer, please don’t forget to thank them for their continued business and ask them for a referral to another. 

We wish you a very successful second half of 2017.