Marketing To The Right Customers So You Don’t Waste Your Money
A lot of companies buy an ad in the program for their local high school team, post their picture on the billboard downtown, or take out an ad in the Sunday clipper but they seldom take the time to make sure they’re marketing to the right customers.
In the world of business you want to market and appeal to your TARGET audience (targeted marketing) and not to just anyone who will listen. When you are marketing to an audience who have no use for your product/service all you are truly doing is wasting precious time and money. In the digital age we live in today, it is silly to waste your time and money on customers who don’t need your product/service because now you can target your customers online.
The internet is where people go to solve specific problems they’re having.
The secret to sales is to provide your customers with a solution to a problem that they’re having.
I have never purchased a product or from a business because of a billboard I seen while driving on the expressway or from the ad in the high school sports program. I don’t find my plumber from the mailer your company sent me and I definitely don’t look in the Sunday clipper for the business I want to give my money to.
It’s the digital age people, haven’t you ever heard of the internet?
I find businesses that I want to work with by “Googling” the product or service I am looking for and finding the best fit. After I research a couple of the top businesses and products that will solve my problems, I will choose the one I want to go with and then reach out for their product of service.
Think about it like this:
You’re a heating and cooling company and you put a $5,000 ad in the program at the high school football game. You’re all excited because the games are packed every Friday and you think, “there is no way I won’t get customers from this.”
However, nobody at the game has a heating and cooling problem and your ad is irrelevant to everyone at the game. You wait weeks for a single customer to call about your services but the phones stay silent and you’ve wasted your $5,000 with no customers to show for it and a bunch of wasted time.
Instead, you should’ve put that same $5,000 into an internet targeted marketing campaign towards customers in your area with heating and cooling issues. With these targeted customers landing on your website, and having a site that is designed to capture their information and make them want to call in, you will start to get customer call ins and relevant leads on a daily basis.
Instead of marketing to a bunch of customers who don’t need your product/service, you will get calls and leads from real customers who actually need you. Now that $5,000 loss you had before will turn in to profit and you will make a return on your investment (ROI), as opposed to losing money while you’re marketing.
You would think this concept is an easy one to understand, but a lot of business owners are still making this fatal mistake. Small business owners are wasting thousands of dollars for paper mailers, billboards, TV commercials, t-shirts, etc but are unwilling to put money into internet marketing that is marketing to the right customers. This blows my mind and all I can say is, DON’T be that business!
Do yourself a favor and take a healthy budget from all of your old marketing techniques and put it towards a targeted online marketing strategy.
If you do this, you will be marketing to the right customers and start to get more relevant customers who are actually looking for your services. These targeted marketing leads will turn into more sales and happier customers who will refer your business to more customers and you will make a lot more money and waste less time.
On the flip side, if you continue with traditional marketing methods and don’t evolve your business into the digital age. You will see your numbers consistently decline till you eventually go out of business, and you will be left wondering where you went wrong. Be a smart business owner and bring your company into the digital age before you get left behind!