May Marketing Results Are In!
Remember back in May when I threw out the challenge to help 10 business owners over 10 hours tweak and review their marketing strategy and any marketing copy? Well it ended up with me seeing 31 Gold Coast business owners over 3 days across a wide sector of businesses. There were professional services, trades, start ups, retailers, inventors and even a convenience store owner!
So, and as an avid business owner, I thought you’d like to know some of the general results, outcomes and solutions these business owners had.
• Systems – 39% of business owners I had one-on-one power sessions with said they struggled with having the systems in place to market their business consistently.
• Websites – 34% said they had a fair amount of traffic hitting their website but their conversion sales or enquiry rate was very poor.
“I recently had a “power session” with Eddie. In just over an hour I came away with sales headlines, promotional ideas and a campaign plan. All in just over an hour Eddie is more than just a copywriter – he sees the big picture and can assist with business strategies on how to make your copy work best for you.”
Sarah Allan, Marketing & Business Development Manager
Where To Spend – 11% said they understood how important marketing is, but were not sure where it was best to spend their marketing (not advertising) dollars.
• Not measuring results and sounding all the same! And last but not least, 16% said they lacked the writing skills to attract attention, create offers and separate themselves from their competitors using their USP. They also expressed that they had spent thousands on marketing and never measured the results.
“I recently had a “power session” with Eddie. In just over an hour I came away with sales headlines, promotional ideas and a campaign plan. All in just over an hour Eddie is more than just a copywriter – he sees the big picture and can assist with business strategies on how to make your copy work best for you”.
Sarah Allan, Marketing & Business Development Manager
Active Body Therapies
Solutions
• Lack of Systems – For the 39% who struggled with not having the time to create and implement a marketing system or funnel my advice was to dedicate a marketing budget no matter how big or small and work with that.
Then automate as much process as you can and outsource or delegate other duties or tasks so you as the business owner can create and set up a marketing funnel that focuses on bringing in clients from your website, print, email and whatever other marketing strategies you use for the growth of your business. Keep testing keep measuring and moving forward. Oh and if it doesn’t feel right on first impressions, don’t do it!
• Poor Website conversion rates – For the 34% who said they had a fair amount of traffic hitting their website but they weren’t converting those visitors into prospects or sales although each case is different there were a few commonalities.
1) Some of the websites looked great but were confusing and slow to load. They had lots of reverse text (white words on coloured backgrounds), which makes the copy hard to read especially on a computer screen.
2) Slow loading websites makes people click away because people are time poor and impatient so keep the flash graphics to a minimum.
3) Other websites I reviewed had headlines, sub-headers and body content that didn’t attract, connect or motivate their audience to take any form of action or add anything of value for their visitor such as free report downloads, or offer.
4) And a smaller percentage of those websites I reviewed consisted of content that was more about how the good the business was instead of answering the “what’s in it for me?” as a potential prospect or consumer.
• Where To Spend Their Marketing Dollars – For the 11% said they understood how important marketing is, but were not sure where it was best to spend their marketing (not advertising) dollars so here’s what I shared with them generally as each business had different markets, different strategies and different budgets.
1) Find one basic strategy that works the best, then do it consistently.
2) Places ads (or banner ads) in publications and websites where your target audience reads, not where you think they read.
3) Keep all communications in language and tone that speaks to your specific target audience.
4) Focus your marketing efforts on your backend or existing clients. They know you, trust you, will refer you and can be a goldmine of new and repeat business.
5) Before spending a cent, ask the magazine, website or wherever your thinking of placing a print or online ad, what is the distribution and criteria of the people who read and receive the magazine, newspaper or online marketing you may be thinking of using?
6) Determine what the outcome is for your ad online or offline? Is it a brand image ad with Britney Spears scantily dressed holding a Pepsi can to drive the brand, or do you want people to phone, contact or buy from you and beat a path to your door or website?
Best wishes
Eddie
The Guy In Charge
Eddie’s Copywriting & Marketing Centre
“For Copywriting, Marketing Strategies and Marketing Collateral That Stick!”
