Tag: Blogging

Marketing is so much more than promotion

Posted on by Richard Milton

No matter the size of your business every penny you spend & every hour you commit to your marketing has to count towards you achieving your business goals.

Promotion is an important part in your marketing efforts but ‘effective marketing’, the entire marketing that satisfies the needs of your customers is so much more. You can have a great promotional campaign but if your product or service isn’t wanted or you are charging prices that are above what your target customers will pay then it will struggle to deliver.

 

To have ‘effective marketing’ you need to consider a wider range of factors than just promotion. Much of it isn’t difficult with the result being that it can transform the impact of your marketing. Here are just a few ideas:

• Start with product. Give customers what they need not what you think they need. Think wider than the actual product – consider the other features that surround your product – delivery methods and times, guarantees, installations, refunds, exchange policies – all of which can make your product or service more attractive.

• Speak to your customers. Ask them what they need and want from you. Find out what they think of your product or service and how it can be improved.

• Ask your customers for reviews. If they are liking what you do then encourage them to share with others what they think of your product and to post reviews on-line.

• Regularly monitor your sector and competitors. Consider how tastes are changing or new products are being launched and adapt where necessary.

• Make it easy for people to acquire your product. That maybe how they can find you or buy your product on-line. Make sure your website is mobile responsive and is search engine optimised.

• Develop your team. Ensure that everyone who works for you has great knowledge about your business and offer. Ensure they also have the right attitude & provide the level of service your customers would expect.

• Be responsive to your customers. Ensure you follow up on enquiries quickly – not many buy products or services from a company they have had to chase or have had to wait a long time to respond.

• Deal with customer complaints well. No doubts you have all had customers who haven’t been completely satisfied but how you deal and resolve their compliant will make all the difference to whether they buy from you again or recommend you to others.

• Measure, measure, measure. If you don’t measure your marketing you can’t understand, control or improve it. Use tools such as Google Analytics to see how well your website is working, monitor your email performance or conduct market research to understand what your target audience think about you and your product or service.

About the author

Richard Milton is founder of e-nexus Ltd – a Marketing Consultancy based in Bournemouth specialising in Strategic Marketing Planning and Performance Measurement. He is a career long marketer holding numerous senior marketing positions throughout his 20+ years in the profession.

Describing himself as a marketing strategist, Richard spends his time working with business owners, managers and marketers to help them improve their marketing decisions, investments and impact by connecting data, insight and creativity alongside his strategic experience.

 

How important are existing customers to your business

How important are existing customers to your business? Do you know?

Posted on by Richard Milton

How important are existing customers to your business? Do you know?

Who doesn’t want a good base of individuals or businesses who are loyal, regular, repeat customers. We all do surely, it makes sound business sense.

But do you know how important existing customers are to you business? Are you confident that you are placing enough emphasis on retaining existing customers compared to attracting new customers? Perhaps now is the time to find out by calculating your Returning vs New Customer Metrics.

These metrics will help you understand the real value of these two groups to your business and enable you, as with any good metric, to make decisions on how much time and money you should put into your marketing for the different groups.

• Start by calculating your Total Number of Customers either at a specific point of time e.g. 1st January or over a point of time e.g. in 2018. Now split these into new customers and repeat customers to see your new customer to repeat customer ratio.

• Next work out the Value of an Average New Customer to your business vs that of a Returning Customer over the lifetime of your relationship. We generally recommend it’s worth also considering the costs you incur with attracting new customers e.g. advertising and retaining existing customers e.g. loyalty incentives. You can now see the costs of generating business and how the business generated between the two groups varies over time. Does that value change over the period a customer stays with you?

• Finally look at calculating the Average Time a Customer Remains Loyal to your business. This is a good indicator of your customers views towards your organisation, how good you are at maintaining existing customer relationships and their likely purchase intentions.

What next?

With this understanding conduct a review of what you do to attract new customers and keep existing customers. Think about the time, money and effort you put into these two groups. Have you got the balance right? Should you for example amend your advertising spend or customer relationship management approaches? Should you consider incentives to either attract new customers or keep existing customers? Perhaps if you discover customers aren’t particularly loyal you should consider loyalty schemes or enhancing the quality of your customer service.

Whatever you do with this knowledge you’ll be in a much stronger position as a business to maximise the benefits from both groups and drive your business forward.

About the author

Richard Milton is founder of e-nexus Ltd – a Marketing Consultancy based in Bournemouth specialising in Strategic Marketing Planning and Performance Measurement. He is a career long marketer, holding numerous senior marketing positions throughout his 20 years in the profession. Describing himself as a marketing strategist, performance and measurement specialist, Richard spends time working with business owners, managers and marketers to help them improve their marketing decisions, investments and impact by harnessing the power of data and insights alongside his strategic experience.

Richard’s biggest passion is to help marketers show the value of their efforts and give them the confidence and skills to be able to share the story with their senior managers. Richard helps organisations understand the importance of measurement and metrics as well as appreciate the breadth of data available to them in todays marketing world.

You can read more from Richard at his measure4success blog at www.measure4success.wordpress.com.  To find out more about e-nexus visit www.e-nexus.co.uk

 

How loyal are your customers?

Posted on by Richard Milton

What do your customers think of your business? Would they recommend you, your products or services to their family and friends? Calculate your Net Promoter Score (NPS) and gauge your customer’s overall satisfaction with your business and their loyalty to your brand.

Net Promoter Score is used by many companies to gauge the loyalty of a firm’s customer relationships and serves as an alternative to traditional customer satisfaction research. What’s more, it’s felt by many that there is a strong correlation between a high Net Promoter Score and company growth. Your NPS can be as low as −100 (everybody is a detractor) or as high as +100 (everybody is a promoter). An NPS that is positive (i.e., higher than zero) is felt to be good, and an NPS of +50 is excellent.

Calculating your Net Promoter Score

To calculate your Net Promoter Score ask your customers, most likely in a simple survey how likely they are to recommend your company to a friend or colleague, using a scale of zero to 10, with 10 being highest. Then work out the percentage of responses that scored your company between seven and 10, then zero and six. Subtract the zero-to-six percentage from the seven-to-10 percentage, and you have your Net Promoter Score.

You can also take the opportunity when surveying your customers to ask some further questions on how and what you can improve to potentially push your NPS even higher.

Who are your top customers by Profit or Life Time Value

Posted on by Richard Milton

Have you ever stopped and calculated who are your best customers?  It sounds simple but how often do you identify and rank the customers who drive the most profit for your business?

Ranking these customers from highest to lowest by Profit or Life Time Value lets you see which individuals or groups drive an outsized portion of your business results.  When you can look at a single list and see your main customers you have the power to identify the unique characteristics of your customers and work hard to attract more.  Is it who they are, where they live, or what they buy?

Knowing that answer can be more valuable than just making a sale. By focusing your customer service, marketing, promotions and sales offers you can build the long-term value of these customers.  You can also find more existing and new customers who share the same characteristics as well as empower these customers to become advocates of your business.

At e-nexus we specialise in Strategic Marketing Planning & Performance Measurement.  Need some help? Find out how we can help your business by visiting our website.

About the author

Richard Milton is founder of e-nexus – a Marketing Consultancy based in Bournemouth specialising in Strategic Marketing Planning and Performance Measurement.  He is a career long marketer holding numerous senior marketing positions throughout his 20+ years in the profession.

Describing himself as a marketing strategist, Richard spends his time working with business owners, managers and marketers to help them improve their marketing decisions, investments and impact by connecting data, insight and creativity alongside his strategic experience.