The first step to making great decisions, is to ensure you are working with accurate data.
- You can assume your past clients were happy with you or you can ask them. By the way, if you get too few word of mouth referrals from past clients, do this now.
- You can assume that prospective clients can find you on search engines or you can check your analytics. Look for things like the search terms they use, the pages they view and how they move through your site, etc.
- You can assume that your marketing copy is as good as it can be or you can split test it. By testing different versions and measuring the feedback, you can refine your message and massively improve your results.
It’s easy to make bad decisions, simply because you are basing them on incorrect assumptions.
Thankfully, it’s almost as easy to take the guess work out and make better decisions, from accurate data.
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From what I read, I can see that the first bullet talks about offline marketing and the last two talks about online marketing particularly search engine optimization and pay per click advertising. Would you advise to do both online and offline advertising simultaneously or would you rather opt to do one of them at a time? I’m also wondering how do you gather your offline marketing data? I look forward to reading your answers, Jim. Thank you in advance.
Hi Mary. Welcome to the blog.
The challenge with answering that kind of question, is that there is no global answer for every business. Many small business owners have zero need to market offline at all. Others find offline marketing effective.
It’s about getting the correct the marketing mix for *your* business.
Regarding gathering offline marketing data, it depends on what type of marketing you’re doing and what the call to action is. Something as simple as a toll-free number can be measured by the number of calls. Special promotions via a mailing can be measured by sales of the promoted products.
Again, it depends 100% on you, your business, your industry and your marketing. One size doesn’t fit all.
Thanks for a great comment, Mary.
Another interesting article Mr. C.
So, I worked with an organization some years back, who sold office equipment via the web. They got lots of traffic to their sites but were suffering from very poor sales. They thought the reason was because they were charging too much. They reduced their prices by 20% across the board and saw no increase.
Eventually they discovered that the reason their sales were so poor was that no one could navigate their ecommerce site correctly except us. They got some expert assistance and sales quickly grew.
Ive no idea how much they lost by assuming the wrong things.
Thanks
Hey Greg. One of the first assumptions small business owners make, when business is slow or sales numbers or dropping, is that they need to lower their prices or fees.
Whilst this can be the case, it often isn’t. Seems like the easiest thing to do is drop a price, yet it can prove to be a costly mistake.
Thanks for the feedback.
Assumption is the mother of all mistakes. Never assume anything.