Use A Shotgun and The Rule of 3 To Make More Sales
October 31, 2007
Are you using the shotgun method in your marketing? If you’re not you’re losing sales.
The fact is, most potential customers will need to see your branding three times before they decide to use your product or services. So you need to focus on one small group at a time and ensure that this happens. And this is true whether you have an online business or bricks and mortar.
Here are a few tips for ensuring this happens:
1) Don’t use the machine gun approach and fire a dozen different marketing strategies at random consumers. Use a shotgun – target a specific group and make sure they see you at least 3 times.
2) Notice I said see what you are offering, not just hear or see your name. Most people are visual, or kinsthetic. So, you should have a clear, simple, logo. And your message in your advertising should give them an idea of how they will feel when they use your product or service.
3) Make sure you target a small group of people at a time. Choosing your group and how to market to them is easier than you think. First, pick a recent customer – not just any customer, but a good one. Someone who has made a decent size purchase from you, paid on time and hasn’t been a complete pain. Then you target customers in the same area, using the same marketing methods.
4) You already know how your great customer found you, because you asked them. If you didn’t – give yourself a dope slap and make sure you know where all your customers come from in the future. This bit is dead easy. If you take your orders by telephone, you simply ask them how they heard about you.
If you take orders online, you make the question a simple part of your online order form. And if you have a retail outlet, when they’re paying you tell them you run special offers from time to time and ask them to fill out a form so they can receive them. Your question should be part of this simple form.
5) Use every opportunity to discover as much as you can about your ideal target customer. If you’ve followed the steps above you already know how they found you, and you know what area they are from.
6) Once you’ve defined your ideal customer make sure they see your product or service at least three different times. Eg: If your ideal customer hangs out in niche forums, make sure you are a valuable contributor to that forum, consider advertising on the forum. Focus on what keywords potential customers on that forum may be using to find what they’re looking for, and set up a targeted Google adwords campaign.
If you have bricks and mortar business, you could drop flyers in the customers local area. At the same time, you could target that area with a mailing campaign. You could also advertise in a local publication. Small publications such as community or parish newsletters are far cheaper than local newspapers.
7) Don’t give up to easily. Remember most potential customers need to hear your marketing message at least three times. And it does work. Just to give you an idea on how well it works – we were getting mediocre results in a particular target area. So, we chose just one street in that area to test, using three different marketing methods. The results were astounding – 7 jobs on that one small street within 2 days.
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