These are the three Golden Rules of Marketing – the foundations of your business success.
If your answer to any of these questions is ‘no’ – don’t worry – you’re not alone. But experience tells us that if you are willing to apply these principles to your business, you will see your profits increase significantly.
1. Do you Test and Measure every aspect of your Marketing?
Being outstanding at marketing is fairly straightforward – but so few businesses do it. You just need to continually test new marketing strategies on a small scale. It may be a new direct mail campaign, a new ad, a letter to your customers, an email, a new headline on your website, a two week telephone campaign. You test small, then you measure the results. What did it cost? What revenue did it generate? If it was not profitable, you’ve learnt an important lesson and move on. If it was profitable, you roll it out and make it an integral part of your marketing mix.
If you tested five new things every month and just one out of the five was successful (if you use our marketing strategies it’s more likely to be four out of five) then at the end of a year you would have twelve new proven marketing strategies to add to your mix. So testing and measuring all of your marketing is the first golden rule of Marketing.
Of course, before you test new marketing approaches, you need to be testing and measuring what you are already doing. For example, the number of businesses who advertise and have never accurately measured the response and therefore don’t know if the ads work – is scary.
If you’re going to be great at Marketing, you must, must test and measure everything.
2. Are you clear what the purpose of your business is?
Outstanding business performers share a similar way of thinking about business. The highest purpose of their business is not to just make money or increase profits. The highest purpose of their business is to add real value to the lives of their customers or clients.
We’re not talking about some vague concept of adding value. We’re talking about a deep commitment to enhance the lives of those you interact with. Why is this so important? It is the single most effective sales tool any business can employ. If you call a company and they just want to make money from you, you can tell instantly can’t you? But if you call a company and they’re willing to do whatever it takes to make your life easier, solve your problems, meet your needs and answer your questions – don’t you just love it?
When we stop obsessing about how great our product or service is, and start obsessing about adding enormous value to the lives of our customers and clients – our profits soar – and as an added bonus, doing business becomes much more pleasurable.
3. Is your marketing continually focused on explaining the BENEFITS of your product or service?
One of the biggest marketing mistakes that businesses make is focusing on the details of their product or service, rather than the benefits it offers customers.
People will only buy from you when they, either consciously or sub consciously understand how they are going to benefit from what you are offering them.
Every conversation you have and every paragraph of your brochures, letters and website should convey the benefits of what you have to offer. Of course, for this to happen YOU have to be clear on what these benefits are. Sometimes, we’re so close to our business that’s not such an easy question to answer. Ask some of your colleagues what the top three benefits of your product are. If they hesitate – you’ve identified the first area where you can make a significant difference to your marketing.
