A week and a half ago, I got to listen to a local internet-marketing business owner talk about his sales struggles and equate them to the sales struggles of my office. He explained some internet industry lingo, which was a nice refresher, but then talked about how my sales team could utilize internet-marketing knowledge to help better prospect and build successful campaigns. I bet this is pretty relevant to a lot of advertising media folks.
A taste:
-You can fill your client’s funnel all day with new customers, but if the rest of the funnel to conversion sucks, your client won’t see any concrete “results.”
-Find the smaller customers that can help pull the sales conversion trigger even when you start growing their business – you will have a better customer that can then give you more business.
-If you have two decision makers deciding on what the creative message will say, you may wind up trying to cater to two different desires and have an ad that does two things half as good and then neither of the decision makers are happy with you. Set this expectation up front so you can help change your fate!
-When someone wants to “test” with you to see if it works, you have to make sure the client does a “mafia offer.” It’s an offer their customers can’t refuse. It doesn’t have to be expensive for the client to execute like (come in for a free _____) and can still be something that has a lower variable cost like free drink/treat/gift with purchase.
-When meeting with a client to discuss the campaign, ask them what they feel the moment will be when your medium has done it’s job. It it’s, “I got a lot of calls/walk-ins/orders,” make sure the message supports the action. Also, keep in mind (so make sure to ask them) what has worked in the past.
-Does your client truly have a mechanism to measure what influence your medium had on their campaign? Are they looking at their web site traffic and counting how many calls they get once your medium goes live with their message? Do they understand that they should also look at search terms (both general and branded) volume they get once the campaign goes live as well? That was probably some of your doing.
Patti is still learning 