Cost Effective Marketing

Everyone these days seems to be finding themselves with too much to do and too little time and money to do it with. Join the club. What it seems to be coming down to is how well you know your custemers, how, when and where you place your message, and how to provide a created call to action from them. Yet even in these tight times there are ways for you to place your message and get the most bang for your buck by using your existing assets to ensure that the marketing channels you are using are being used and performing at an optimal level for you.

Customers unwilling to spend now will at some point come back to the table and start spreading the wealth. Who will they shower their love on, you or your competition? I came across a new term floating in marketing this week called “lead incubation” and found it an interesting concept. In sales I have always used the funnel approach. But whatever you want to call it, sales leads need to be worked though a cycle, and the cycle is not yours it’s your customer’s. You can’t rush a good thing.

So how do we take these leads to desired ending point, the sale?

It still takes nurturing.

Compared to traditional media, the new digital and social media is often seen as being more cost effective. A Shop.org survey released in November 2008 stated that 25% of retailers created a Facebook page to try and boost holiday sale. However many warn against just jumping on the band wagon of SM just because it’s there. You cannot just go out and jump into social media networks and SMS and succeed. (Don’t I know it.)

A lot of people and would-be marketers look at the research and say we need to revamp our marketing strategy and get into these social networks. You still need a strategy to your marketing and it still needs to be comprehensive and singular in nature.

Larson note: So you want to get into SM? (Most likely you are or you would not be reading this blog, lol) Great but keep yourself tightly disciplined in managing money, time, and performance, and keep testing, measuring and refining the effectiveness of each marketing strategy you put out there. This is a fast moving word of innovation and ways to implement. It can be done but that too has a price.


Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
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*Source: Shop.org, eMarketing