Are you measuring your response rates?
When I ask about response rates or conversion rates all too often my customers convey that they have no idea what types of responses they are getting to their marketing. This is counterproductive to their marketing efforts.
If you don’t know the response rates to a marketing piece, you don’t know whether or not it is effective. If you don’t know whether or not it is effective, then you don’t know if it is a worthy return on your investment. If you don’t know if it is a good return on your investment, then you are just blindly pumping money into your marketing.—does any of this make sense?
Response mechanisms can come in many forms that can apply to different marketing pieces and different budgets. Personalized URLs, generic URLs, landing pages, and online surveys can all be used to capture who is responding to your call-to-action (register to win an iPod touch before September 1st at www.XyZ.com).
These online response mechanisms are very effective, very impressive, and generate more response rates but they are not fitting for every project or budget. Some response mechanisms can include a toll free number, calling a specific salesperson, or sending an email to a specific address, all of which can be measured.
Another alternative is to use your marketing piece as your response mechanism. Perhaps your campaign includes a coupon/voucher with a serial number that must be redeemed for the incentive. At the end of the promotion you can calculate how many vouchers were redeemed and determine who responded by the serial number.
Sometimes a response mechanism will generate no response. Although unfortunate, this is still very useful feedback. It may be time to rethink the before mentioned elements of your marketing piece and uncover why it isn’t effective. Remember, no feedback is good feedback!
Analyzing your marketing performance is key to successful marketing efforts. This is the most important step of the entire marketing process. It will help drive better results and your marketing performance depends on it!
Aim for your target market!
Your marketing will fall flat if it is not reaching the correct person, so knowing your target audience is key to any marketing campaign.
A few questions to consider: What are the attributes of your best customers? What is the demographic like? Do they have any buying habits or patterns? Be sure to tailor your messaging to identify with this customer.
Data is often overlooked, but it is essential to an effective marketing strategy. Be sure that you are utilizing your current customer list properly. The list can be segmented to identify specific demographic characteristics such as location, gender, age range, income level, and purchase history.
You already know who they are and what, where, when, and how they buy so it is possible to customize your marketing to reach them specifically. A personalized marketing piece is much more effective than a generic one. Perhaps you would prefer to purchase a new prospect list. These are also useful and can be segmented accordingly so you can market to them specifically.
This segmented data is extremely useful for appealing to your target market. For example, consider a gym who might want to advertise its new babysitting service that will watch kids while their parents are working out. The gym’s target audience may be women from their mid twenties to mid thirties with children. A list can be acquired with their addresses but most importantly the creative can be customized to appeal to the consumer. A postcard with a buff body builder lifting weights might not be as appealing as an everyday mom next-door on a treadmill.
Identify you target market and utilize your data to customize your marketing.
Amanda Moore
