9 Step Fool Proof Marketing Action Plan
You don’t have to spend thousands of dollars to create a profitable marketing action plan. In fact, there’s more of a science than an art to creating great marketing plans. Even large consulting agencies follow a ’script’ for uncovering opportunities for their clients. If you’ve ever found it difficult to free up time from the normal daily grind of ‘putting out fires’ to increase sales dramatically, these nine marketing steps will save you months of digging.
Overcoming A Fear of Change
These marketing steps help attract new business, sell more to existing clients, and reactivate business that has drifted away. All without making major changes to your business and without increasing the amount of money you’re probably already investing on ads. Here are the 9 steps:
1) Increase the total number of customers you serve.
2) Increase customer retention.
3) Increase inquiry to sales conversion.
4) Increase the frequency of purchases.
5) Increase the amount (dollar volume) of purchases.
6) Increase your marketing and advertising effectiveness.
7) Find new uses for your products and services
8 ) Make smart use of the internet.
9) "Package" your specialized knowledge
Each of these nine steps are powerful in themselves, but when combined and used simultaneously, profits can grow exponentially. Let’s look at each step in a little more detail.
1) Increase the total number of customers you serve. Marketing your business to get new clients is essential. A business that fails to grow stagnates and dies. Unfortunately, getting new clients is often the only marketing method many businesses focus on. That’s a mistake. Whether you hire sales reps, telemarketers, use word of mouth, referral systems, ads, or some other marketing approach to get new clients, seeking new business is often the slowest, most expensive, and most risky method of making a buck. The next seven marketing steps require less effort and less money to implement and can be just as profitable.
2) Increase customer retention. Recognizing and eliminating clients from drifting away is the same as increasing your revenues. Think about it. If you normally have an annual 30% loss of clients and you bring that to zero, that’s the same as giving yourself a 30% increase in sales to your bottom line — all without taking on a single dollar of expense. It’s like getting free money.
3) Increase inquiry to sales conversion. Say you’re now closing 50% of the inquiries you get. If you improve your sales skills and the way you initially target prospects to insure only the highest probability prospects respond, you can increase your closing to 100% — with no increase in costs to you. This also is an instant profit increase without taking on a penny of expense
4) Increase the frequency of purchases. The more frequently your clients buy from you the more money you make. Period.
5) Increase the amount (dollar volume) of purchases. You can do this with point of purchase incentives. You can imitate Mc Donald’s and package multiple items together as a "value" or you can choose to encourage your clients to "Supersize".
6) Increase your marketing and advertising effectiveness. Eliminate the 32 common marketing mistakes everyone is making and adopt principles proven to boost results 300% to 2100% or more. Marketing decisions are made under uncertain conditions. It is impossible to know the exact response from clients without some form of testing or the response of competitors. However, there are 32 sales-killing mistakes that are commonly repeated. Eliminating these mistakes will boost your profits.
7) Find new uses for your products and services that you had not considered before now.
8 ) Make smart use of the internet. This includes web pages, articles distribution, getting syndicated, squeeze pages, search engine optimization, affiliate marketing, online joint ventures, email marketing, and so much more.
9) "Package" and profit from your specialized knowledge. This step involves identifying your unique knowledge and experiences. And also requires identifying the markets that are dying for your information. Don’t under-value what you know. Entire multi-million dollar companies have been built on this one step alone.
Most anyone can create a profitable marketing action plan by following this simple 9-step process. Make sure to use each step because improving each area by just 15% over what you are now seeing could yield a 300% to 500% increase in profits and revenues for this year alone. All without spending a penny more on advertising.
For a more detailed discussion of this plan see my 12 Step Marketing Blueprint while the blueprint is still being published online for free.