You’ve got to be tenacious to drive business. I’d say “tenderly tenacious!”
Tenacious marketers want to get the maximum value from their efforts. They are always on the hunt for more, new and different and more efficient ways to grow their company. They are at the forefront, and always take time to test and evaluate their marketing tactics and strategies in order to find out what works best for their business.
Here are 10 ways to become a more tenacious marketer:
by Ryan Caligiuri
1. Test and benchmark
Tenacious marketers don’t just send out one mass e-mail and sit back. They want to figure out what works best. So they want to come up with ways to test different strategies and gauge what works best. One technique is called split testing. Divide your contacts in half and send the same e-mail to both groups, with a slight change to one. It might be as simple as a different subject line or value proposition. Then see which works best. By pitting two similar e-mails against each other, you can learn what is the better motivator. It’s a way to test and create benchmarks, then use what you discover to replicate success on future campaigns.
2. Always have a strategy
Without a strategy, you are a nomad in marketing your business. A strategy points you in the right direction and ensures your actions are building to something. For example, when using social media, tenacious marketers don’t just make conversation; they have a purpose in mind. And they always use social media as a means to an end.
3. Always be on the lookout for revenue-generating opportunities
Tenacious marketers must always be on the lookout for new ways to generate revenue. They don’t just try to fill a room when they run a special event. They look for more ways to bring in additional revenues from exhibitors, and pull in more sponsors, advertisers and businesses that are interested in communicating with their attendees.
4. Be direct-response driven
Direct-response mechanisms are techniques you can use to measure how many people respond to a certain marketing message. Website links, specific phone numbers, e-mail addresses and Web pages themselves can all be used to take such measures and gauge your marketing effectiveness according to the number of responses to a communication you send out to the marketplace.
5. Get personal
Tenacious marketers take the time to ensure they are being relevant and personal. For example, when running a direct mail campaign, they don’t just blanket people with a generic letter; they find ways to make it more personal and relevant to each individual receiving it.
6. Get more out of a website
Tenacious marketers don’t put all the focus on how nice a site looks. That’s important but even more important is to make a site perform, focused on educating visitors with the right content, permission fields that collect contact information and sharing offers that are compelling to the marketplace. This takes your website to a whole new level that goes beyond a static billboard – which is what most websites are these days.
7. Deliver more value
When tenacious marketers put together offers, they don’t just create a “me too” imitation. They create an offer with more benefits; this can include building in price inducements, guarantees, trial periods or warranties. Tenacious marketers realize that by adding more value to a program, product or service, they are building a competitive advantage and preventing themselves from being marginalized by the marketplace.
8. Show commitment
When trying to build a relationship, tenacious marketers don’t stop after sending a few messages. They keep up the conversation, continuing to share valuable information related to and relevant to their marketplace over an extended period of time. They understand that it often takes nine to 11 touch points for a someone to respond to a message, so they continue to persist no matter how many times they are ignored.
9. Be driven by referrals
Tenacious marketers always takes advantage of successes by asking for referrals. They remind clients of successes and let them know how much a referral would mean to their business. They tell them who they’re looking for, the type of businesses they can help and offer an incentive for making introductions.
10. Focus on the most likely buyers
Tenacious marketers don’t focus on the open market; they market to their best clients first, their best prospects second and the rest of the world last. Current clients are the ones who are already doing business with you; they trust you and you have already established rapport with them. It would be wasteful to begin marketing the other way around.
It is much easier to take a lackadaisical approach to marketing and do what everyone else is doing, but your results will reflect the effort you put in.
You need to be tenacious to win. (Go Grow!)
Ryan Caligiuri is a Winnipeg-based marketing specialist who believes that many organizations are wasting their money on ineffective marketing tactics, that many professionals and students feel lost because their actions don’t translate into positive results, and that all three groups are too comfortable following the status quo. He is driven by the desire to refocus their efforts to resurrect the impact of marketing.
Posted by AmyJ
