Are you familiar with the 80:20 rule? In business, almost without fail, you’ll find that 80+ percent of your business will come from 20 (or less) percent of your customers. Additionally, 80% of your results will come from 20% of your activities.
What am I getting at here?
Only 20% of your marketing activities will provide 80% of the results. When you focus all of your resources on the top 10-20%, your business takes off.
So how do we do that?
You absolutely must do one thing consistently. You must test. Anytime you are running a marketing campaign of any kind, you should be looking for how you can test it. If you don’t, you could pass up that one explosive marketing powerhouse. Or, what’s even more likely, you keep dumping huge amounts of money into advertising that provides little or know benefit.
Let’s look at a few ways to test…
#1 Way, and almost no one does it – ASK
This is such an odd thing. By far the least expensive and easiest way to find out where people are coming from is to just ask. How did you hear about us? I would bet millions of dollars are lost each year because that question isn’t being asked. Businesses probably close their doors because they forgot to ask one simple question.
Coupons/Discounts
“tell us you heard it on the radio and get 10% off” This is also great for word of mouth.
Tracking Websites
You can easily setup a website that points to your main site and you’ll be able to see the number of times someone comes in through that site.
Tracking Phone Numbers
You can use a company like Telecapture setup phone numbers that forward to your main line but count the number of times the number is called. I would never run a paper ad without this unless everyone answering the phone was perfect with the question, “how did you hear about us?”
Well this turned out to be a long post. I hope it’s helpful.