Tag: Marketing

Create a Winning Sales Campaign

Posted on | by Emi Lesser | Leave a Comment on Create a Winning Sales Campaign
Graphic: sales campaign icons

Confidence and strategy – the two things you need to create a successful sales campaign. Sales campaigns are used as a strategy to boost the sale of products and services in a limited amount of time. The purpose is to inch current leads closer to making their purchase or to grab new consumers’ attention to notice you and convince them to buy.

Check out this list of strategies and tips that will help you create a winning sales campaign.

  1. 1. Know who Your Audience is

    Knowing your target audience is an essential part of creating and delivering a campaign, whether it’s a promotional campaign, marketing campaign, or sales campaign. Harvard Business found that 85% of 30,000 new product launches in the US failed to generate desired revenue due to poor market segmentation. Imagine where those products could be today had they used their money and resources to target the correct market.

    There are many ways to find your audience. It does take some extra time and effort, but it will eventually pay off as marketers who have used segmentation in emails have seen a 760% increase in revenue. Learn how to find your target audience in Find Your Target Market.

  2. 2. Create Killer Content

    Marketers have minimal time to grab the viewer’s attention. Those initial couple seconds make or break the consumer’s decision to interact. Creating killer content will ensure that the consumer is going to pay attention to your campaign.

    To create effective content, you must think like your customers. Understand what they like, dislike, what they want out of a product – the values, benefits, features they look for in that product. Relevant content reflects an understanding of your consumer. Once you know your consumer, it’ll be much easier to create content that will grab their attention.

    The best content is that of which the consumer can picture what it’s like to be a consumer you’ve already helped. Storytelling is becoming among the most popular type of content.

    Know some facts:

    • Subject lines with more than 3 words experience a drop in opening by over 60%. [ContactMonkey]
    • Email marketing has a two times higher ROI than cold calling, networking or trade shows. [MarketingSherpa]
    • 58% of your audience will stop watching video within the first 90seconds. [JoegGirard.ca]
    • Viewers retain 58% of what they see but only 10% of what they read.
    • After a presentation, 63% of attendees remember the stories told. Only 5% remember statistics. [Dan & Chip Heath]

  3. 3. Follow up

    All your time and effort so far will go to waste if you don’t follow up with new and existing prospects. In the content consuming world we live in, consumers can often forget what they saw, which doesn’t necessarily mean they aren’t interested.

    Follow-ups can act as a reminder. With so much on everyone’s plate and lots of content to process daily, a nice reminder can often jump-start the person into action.

    Follow-ups also allow you to gain an understanding of a consumer’s hesitation and work to persuade them otherwise. They build credibility and allows you to tell prospects more about your business rather than them finding information on their own.

    Nurturing your prospect through the decision-making process gives you the advantage and helps you persuade them to make the final decision to buy.

  4. 4. Get Personal

    An effective campaign will speak directly to the person’s wants and needs. This means you need to break your target market down even further. Create different content for different segments and get even more personalized for different targeting.

    Micromarketing or one-to-one marketing is the most specific you can get, tailoring a product or service to suit an individual customer. While this would be best, it’s often not practical. That’s why we suggest using a concentrated targeting strategy. This strategy involves selecting a single, primary target market, and focusing all your energies on providing a product to fit that market’s needs.

    Personalization is key. It makes the consumer feel like you care about their wants and needs. Something as simple as including their name in an email is personalized enough to increase the chances of them opening and engaging with your campaign.

  5. 5. Build familiarity

    Design touchpoints around your target market to build familiarity and leverage yourself above others. Seeing your company here and there will create familiarity with your product/service in the consumer’s eye. While a consumer might not need your product or service at the time the touchpoints are delivered, it will stick with them and done right, reappear when you need it to most.

    Consumers are more likely to buy products and services from companies they have seen before.

  6. 6. Use the data as you go

    With automated reports and analytics, we can see our campaign progress in real-time. There is no more guessing or waiting months for results. Utilizing reports through social media, A/B testing, google analytics, etc. will help you improve your sales campaign.

    Given enough data, you can adjust your campaign in real-time (make sure you’re getting, at the very least, three weeks of data before adjusting). Alter your approach, tweak your segmentation, and add new mediums to create an even better sales campaign.

Prepared to start a sales campaign but aren’t sure if it’s right for you? Check out the Advantages and Disadvantages of Sales Campaigns.

Factors influencing the consumer decision process

Posted on | by Emi Lesser | 3 Comments on Factors influencing the consumer decision process
Graphic two people and lightbulb

Several factors influence the decision-making process of consumers. The way the product is marketed, how consumers think, what situations they are put into, and how society runs all impact consumers’ decisions to buy. Understanding what influences and persuades consumers to buy can help any business boost their sales and marketing spend in the right direction.

Here are the factors you should learn to get a better understanding of the influences affecting how consumers make their purchase decisions.

Marketing Mix

Marketers focus on multiple areas to increase the appeal of their product or service. The marketing mix includes the four Ps: product, price, placement, and promotion.

Product – a product or service that a consumer decides whether it satisfies his or her needs or wants. Marketers emphasize the differentiation in their product to help influence consumers’ decisions.

Price – what is the product or service valued at and what are consumers are willing to pay for it. Must consider the value-based pricing but also cost-based pricing.

Placement – includes placement in the marketplace, but also which stores and specific product placement in a physical store, online, or both where consumers would come across the product or service.

Promotion – where and how consumers see your product or service. Marketers must decide the best mediums to use to reach their target market.

Psychological Factors

The way people receive a marketing message is influenced tremendously by different psychological factors. These factors include motives, attitudes, perceptions, learning, and lifestyle.

Motives – a need or want that is strong enough to cause the person to seek satisfaction. When a need is not satisfied, it motivates us, or drives us, to get satisfaction. Marketers can motivate consumers through physiological needs, safety needs, love needs, esteem needs, and self-actualization.

Attitudes – a person’s enduring evaluation of his or her feelings about behavioral tendencies toward an object or idea, consists of three components: cognitive, affective, and behavioral. Cognitive reflects what a person believes to be true. Affective reflects what a person feels about the issue at hand – his or her like or dislike of something. Behavioral comprises the actions a person takes concerning the issue at hand. Marketers can change consumers’ attitudes through persuasive communications and personal experiences.

Perceptions – how consumers select, organize, and interpret information to form a meaningful picture of the world. Marketing influences our acquisition and consumption of goods and services through our tendency to assign meaning to such things as color, symbols, taste, and packaging.

Learning – change in a person’s thought process or behavior that arises from experience and takes place throughout the consumer decision process. Learning affects both attitudes and perceptions. Each time consumers are exposed to information about a product or service they learn something different that affects their perception.

Lifestyle – the way consumers spend their time and money to live. For many consumers, they choose between whether the product or service fits with their actual lifestyle or their perceived lifestyle.

Social Factors

External factors from the social environment such as family, reference groups, and culture all influence a consumer’s decision to buy.

Family – many purchase decisions are made about products or services that the entire family will consumer or use therefore, consumers often consider the needs of all family members. Children and adolescents play an increasingly important role in family buying decisions so, it’s vitally important to have control over influencing this group.

Reference group – whom an individual uses as a basis for comparison regarding beliefs, feelings, and behaviors. These groups affect buying decisions by offering information, providing rewards for specific purchasing behaviors, and enhancing a consumer’s self-image. A reference group can include family, friends, co-workers, famous people, etc.

Culture – the basis of social factors that influence consumer behavior and affect buying decisions. Culture can be as small as a reference group or as big as the country in which you live, or the religion you practice.

Situational Factors

Factors specific to the situation that sometimes override or at least influence the other two factors, psychological and social issues.

Purchase situation – customers might be predisposed to purchase certain products or services because of some underlying psychological trait or social factor, but these factors may change in certain purchase situations. For example, Lucy considers herself a thrifty shopper. Her best friend’s birthday is coming up, and she wants to get her a watch. If the watch was for herself, she would probably go to JC Penny. But since it’s for her friend, she went to Michael Kors because she wanted to get something fitting for the special occasion.

Shopping situation – consumers might be ready to purchase a product or service but be completely derailed once they arrive in the store. Marketers can use several techniques to influence consumers at this stage of the decision process. These techniques include store atmosphere, salespeople, crowding (customers and shelf packing), in-store demonstrations, promotions, and packaging.

Temporal state – consumers’ state of mind at any particular time can alter their preconceived notions of what they are going to purchase. Time of day, mood, weather, etc. can all affect a consumer purchasing decision.

Information gathered from Grewal, Dhruv, and Michael Levy. Marketing. 5th ed., McGraw Hill Education, 2017.

Find Your Target Market

Posted on | by Emi Lesser | 1 Comment on Find Your Target Market
Graphic target market profile

We have seen it numerous times, businesses not realizing they are missing a huge opportunity because they are either targeting the wrong market entirely or so focused on one target market they don’t notice the large chunk of people coming from another.

It’s crucial that businesses find their prefect target market. Before diving in you must first understand that a target market does not encompass your entire selling market. A target market is those who really want or need your offering, the people most excited about your product, and most likely to buy over others. These are the people you want to direct your marketing campaign towards.

Here are some tips for finding your perfect target market:

  1. 1. Gather information about your company

    Figure out what problems your product/service solves. Be as specific as possible as this will help you narrow your audience down. Once you know the problem you’re solving, find the characteristics of those that have the problem.

    Next, identify what features and benefits your product/service offers. Features are something your product has or is, while benefits are the outcomes or results that users will (hopefully) experience by using your product or service.

    The overall question here is, what will the customer get out of using your specific product or service?

  2. 2. Analyze your current customers

    The best way to find your target market is by learning who is already buying your product/service. Learn their demographics, interests, behaviors, what benefits they get out of the product/service. You want to know how they think and act.

    Once you have a general idea of your current customer base, you’ll want to highlight the similarities between them to come up with your top customers.

    Website and social media analytics are great resources to gather this information. Analytic tools help to see who is visiting, buying, and exploring your website or social media. It also shows how long they spend exploring your website, where they’re located, what industry they work in, their interests, and more. Do not be afraid to also reach out to your existing customers to survey them too.

  3. 3. Analyze your competitors’ customers

    You can find out a lot about your potential customers by researching your competitors. This research will show if competitors have been successful at attracting specific types of customers and whether or not you should be trying to attract those customers too.

    You can learn basic information about your competitor’s customers by looking at their social media accounts and searching through their followers and likes on their posts. If your competitor has a physical store you can also check out who is shopping there.

  4. 4. Conduct market research

    Conduct secondary and primary research to gain more insight. Secondary research is any outside research done about your company or industry. Gather information from other resources that will help find your target market. Primary research is research done by you. Create a survey to gather information on your current customers and everyday people. Ask about their demographics, interests, perceptions of your product and your competition, what services or products they would like to see, etc. Ask any questions that would prove helpful in finding your key market.

  5. 5. Complete your customer profile

    Once you’ve gathered all the information you can, compile a complete profile of your perfect customer. If you offer more than one product or service, you might have multiple target markets. Your profile should include both demographic and psychographic information. From here, you can work on how best to market and advertise to your target market.

The most important and toughest thing to avoid in finding your target market is making assumptions. Let the information you gather tell you who your best and most popular customers are, do not draw your own conclusions.

You must also note that your target market is flexible and always evolving. Knowing who you are targeting and continually refining it will ensure you’re on the right track.

Things to consider when starting a new business

Posted on | by Emi Lesser | 1 Comment on Things to consider when starting a new business

Passion led us here

Starting a new business is fun and exciting but also challenging. There are a million things you need to consider and plan out. While this is certainly not everything, we compiled a list of topics we found most important and points people don’t always consider when starting a new business.

Start while you are still employed

New business owners are never really sure when the company will break even or make a profit. How long can you go without a reliable source of income? Finding time to work on your startup while still being employed can be difficult, but being employed means you always have a reliable source of income while you work through the startup phase.

Make sure the money is lined up

You have your source of income from still being employed, but that doesn’t mean it’s enough to get you started. Many people say to just go for it or you never will. While this is a good point, you do need to make sure you have your finances figured out first, including a backup plan. It takes a while to either save up, find somewhere that will lend you money, or get potential investors. Know where your source of money is coming from before you begin.

Know the legal requirements for starting a business

Getting the legal and tax issues correct the first time will be a huge time and money saver. It’s much more difficult and expensive to correct the flaws after you’ve already begun. Different types of businesses have different requirements. Learn what your legal and tax responsibilities are before you start. Check out the ten steps to start your business from the U.S. Small Business Administration.

Don’t procrastinate

While you might want to have every detail planned out and investigated before you start, there’s no need. You will never be able to predict exactly how your business will go so why fret about every little detail when your whole plan could blow up at the slightest change. No one ever really has all the pieces in place. You’d go crazy trying to figure out every possible route and solution. Do your research, scope out the market, have a basic plan, but don’t let perfection push you to procrastination.

Get professional help

One of the reasons people start a business is for passion and drive. Being driven and passionate, however, does not mean you’re an expert on starting a business. A lot goes into a business that people don’t generally think about such as, accounting and contracting. You’re not going to be an expert on all things business overnight. Consider hiring a professional to do such jobs. While some might forgo hiring professionals and attempt to do it themselves, they are, in the long run, wasting time and possibly money.

Absorb everything

There are others who have been in the exact same position as you, listen to them! They probably have some of the greatest advice since they know first-hand what it’s like to start a business. Smart entrepreneurs learn from the mistakes of others. Listen to your friends and family too, they know you and can help you work through things. Other people’s ideas and opinions of the business are important too as they can reflect what consumers think. As you listen and learn write things down, then take those ideas, opinions, advice, and work them out to make plans for your business.

Share your business – Put yourself out there

How are you supposed to sell your business if you don’t share your business? It can be intimidating to share your business with others, but you can’t be worried about every person’s opinion.

Talk about your business. You never know who could be listening and the connections you could make to grow your business. People like to do business and support businesses of people they know. Be bold and speak confidently. If you want your business to succeed, you need to be able to convince consumers to buy from and support your business.

Make sure you are marketing and networking constantly. Put your business out there and don’t be shy!

Don’t fixate on mistakes

Successful entrepreneurs learn from their mistakes and move on. Dwelling on your failures will get you nowhere. Anyone and everyone can tell you that in the business of creating a business, there is no room or time for self-pity. Realize your mistake, learn from it, and move on. Everyone hits roadblocks and mistakes; it’s how you react that matters.

Never stop learning and implementing new things

People are constantly changing their likes and habits. In response, the market changes. Unless you want to be left in the past, you need to be constantly adapting to the new market. Keep your eyes and ears open for new things. Are there new ways to market? A different variation you could be offering? A new target market you could capture? Listen to your customers and pay attention to your industry.

We hope this list helps you better plan out your new journey and follow your passion!

How to get free sales leads online

Posted on | by Emi Lesser | Leave a Comment on How to get free sales leads online

One of the hardest things about starting and continuing to run a business is gaining and retaining customers. From small businesses to big businesses we all need customers to make our companies succeed and continue to succeed long into the future.

There are several ways businesses can find customers but very little of those come at no cost. That is why we created FreeSalesLeads.us. FreeSalesLeads.us is a simple-to-use online database that makes finding prospects and customers easy.

With our easy to use layout you can find customers that match your profile in minutes. Users have the ability to narrow their search down within our 14 million plus business leads and 260 million plus consumer leads (further broken down into homeowners or households).

After choosing business or consumer leads, break down your search by geography (ZIP code), type of business, home value, and other demographics to get the perfect sales leads for your business. You will find leads anywhere from homeowners, businesses, insurance agents, relators, car owners, lawyers, medical professionals, and much more.

Once you perfect your search you will gain access to prospects names, addresses and contact information. Each day the total number of prospects available to you resets to keep your flow constant. That’s hundreds of new leads per week!

FreeSalesLeads prides itself on supplying up to date, accurate leads. That is why we guarantee honesty and transparency within our service, reliability through triple-verified and up to date data, and quality leads that will help your company grow.

Getting started is easy and free! Just visit our homepage to start reaching more customers.

Graphic: how to get FSL

Business Growth Strategies

Posted on | by Emi Lesser | Leave a Comment on Business Growth Strategies
Business Growth Graphic

Growth within a company is vital to its survival. That means constantly evaluating your company to see where there is potential for growth.

Knowing who you are currently targeting will help in your decision for growth. That means you must identify and understand your market segments and target audience (learn how in Increase profit opportunities with STP) before considering the choices for growth.

Once you understand your target market and company impact there are four overall strategies we recommend considering and choosing from to grow your business.

  1. 1. Market Penetration

    Focuses on current products and current markets in order to increase market share. Market penetration requires greater marketing efforts or intensified distribution efforts where the product is already sold. It is the lowest risk growth strategy.

    This growth strategy might be achieved by attracting new consumers to the current target market or encouraging current customers to promote or buy more often from the company. Achieve these strategies by making your current product more appealing.

    Example: Under Armour has consistently focused on selling performance apparel such as athletic footwear, clothing, and accessories. It has fueled its growth by focusing largely on promotion, distribution, and consistency. Under Armour has been very effective at developing inspiring advertisements that feature well-known male and female athletes. [lumen]

  2. 2. Market Development

    Uses the existing product/service and current marketing offering to reach new market segments. It seeks to sell into new markets. Discovering new uses for your product and expanding domestically and sometimes even internationally will help you reach this grow strategy.

    Example: Uber started out as a ride service app that allowed users and users friends to get a ride from point A to point B in whatever ride was offered to them. Since then Uber has expanded to offer Uber Pool (ride sharing), Uber Comfort (newer cars with extra leg room), Uber Black (luxury upgrade) and more to seek a new market of customers.

  3. 3. Product Development

    Offering a new product or service to the current target market. Branch off from your current product/service to offer a new product or service you think the current target market would enjoy and use.

    Example: With environmental concerns growing among consumers, rising gasoline prices and a desire for a reliable vehicle, Nissan developed a new product. The Nissan Leaf became the first electric vehicle. Nissan has remained a leader in the electric vehicle market.

  4. 4. Diversification

    Offering a new product or service to a market segment the company currently does not serve. This opportunity can be either related or unrelated.

    Related diversification means the current target market shares something in common with the new opportunity. Companies might purchase from the same vendors, use the same distribution and management information system, or advertise in the same spot to target markets similar to their current consumers.

    Unrelated diversification means the new business lacks any common elements with the present business. It does not rely on the strengths of the current market or products. It is very risky.

  5. Examples:

  6. Uber started out as a ride service app but has since used diversification to introduce a new product, Uber eats (food delivery on demand).

  7. General Electric began as a merger between two electric companies. Over the years, GE successfully branched out into a wide variety of industries including power and water, transportation, oil and gas, aviation, healthcare, and more.

Make sure you choose the option that is best for your company. Take the time to do research and really understand where your company should go next.

Information gathered from Grewal, Dhruv, and Michael Levy. Marketing. 5th ed., McGraw Hill Education, 2017.