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Marketing
Marketing Secrets on a Shoestring Budget
Strategies to help make you a marketer, not a seller.
By John A. Palumbo
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I
have found that most product suppliers are somewhat
out of touch with the fundamentals of how to implement great, yet
inexpensive marketing programs. Simply reading this article gives
you a clear advantage over your competition. You are taking the initiative
to expand your business and increase your profits while your competition
becomes stagnant and complains about how tough it is to merely find
more business.
No matter how many homes are built in your marketing area and no matter
how educated you may be in marketing management, the tips below are
guaranteed to produce a windfall of new business in a very short amount
of time.
It does not take a marketing genius to spend tens of thousands of
dollars utilizing a variety of market resources and mediums to get
your message into the marketplace. However, great budget-conscious
marketers are made, not born. It requires discipline, a precise system
and a highly strategic plan to really develop your business marketing
savvy.
MAKING THE SWITCH
If you want to grow your business like a weed, gain a decisive and
competitive advantage, attract new customers in droves and redouble
your profits, then you need to open your mind and revamp outdated
marketing ideals that you may have.
Fortunately, great marketing is more science than art, and like any
scientific endeavor the better your processes, procedures and techniques,
the better your end results. To compete in today’s market, builders
need to find as many small niches as they can and excel in niches
that cannot be filled by larger competitors. To become good at niche
marketing you have to take a little piece of the market and be good
at it. A niche marketer can get very big and profitable and have high
growth results, but still not appear on the big guy’s radar screen.
To become a good niche marketer, companies need to switch their mentalities
from that of a seller to that of a marketer. Marketing is the opposite
of selling. Find a need people have and make people aware of your
solution, then selling becomes almost unnecessary.
Following are 10 core strategy secrets that every top producing company
I have ever worked with has learned to master:
• Your Goals—The simple setting and monitoring of
goals for each area of your company can cause a 150 to 200 percent
increase in performance.
Do you know how to set goals, reinforce goals or support a goal-oriented
environment? The most important thing you can do for your company
is to create a goal orientated environment.
• Hiring and Motivating—There is no way I could do
justice to the impact of this particular subject. Most people would
not know a super star performer if they bumped into one on the street.
Most managers do not realize it, but for every idea you have, there
are 10 top performers out there who would love to take the ball and
run with it for you.
Also, you can get them to work on straight commission and love it.
Turn them into your greatest profit generator instead of an expense.
There are certain types of recruiting tools that have a virtual guarantee
of top performers, but the most important recommendation that I could
make would be to use a good, quality behavior profile assessment and
sales profile for every candidate you consider. You can e-mail me
for recommendations and samples of the most cost effective profiles
to help you in this area.
• Strategy vs. Tactics—Now this is a big one, but
before I begin, we need to break marketing into several categories.
The first thing to really understand is the difference between strategy
and tactics. Strategy means you have determined in advance an ultimate
goal you would like to achieve for each tactic. Tactics are the things
you do to achieve your goal.
A tactic is a marketing effort such as a yellow page ad, a newsletter,
a trade publication such as Hurricane Protection or a speaking engagement.
So, if you want to be the most respected company in your market, you
should ask yourself, do my tactics reflect that desire? These things
just won’t happen; you have to make them happen.
• Understanding the Sales Process—If you do not understand
the sales process thoroughly, then you are fooling yourself about
being successful. There are numerous fundamental steps that every
person goes through in order to make a purchase decision. Mastering
these steps is one of the more powerful things that can lead to greatness.
Do not just leave it to sales representatives to know those steps.
There are many great programs offered by your local trade association
that you should attend at a very nominal cost to members. There are
also outside programs such as Dale Carnegie to help reinforce the
process.
• Keep’em Curious—In his book, Accidental Magic,
Roy Williams asks the question, “What was the last movie you
paid to see twice?” It was probably a movie that made you curious.
One that was interesting and thought provoking because you did not
know exactly what was happening until the end of the movie.
In the same way, an ad that you are not sure where it is heading is
more interesting. An example of such an ad is a radio advertisement
that has no ending. The next time you hear that ad you would likely
turn up the radio just to try to get some additional details. Wouldn’t
you want people to turn up your ads?
• Profiting from Co-Op Advertising and Strategic Alliances—If
you had someone willing to pay for half of every ad you ran, or anytime
you did a direct mail piece they would cover all the postage, or would
split the cost with you for any publication you want to run consistent
advertising in monthly, why would you ever pay for 100 percent of
your advertising again? That is exactly what co-op advertising is
all about.
Many of the vendors which you are now using will gladly pay to put
your name in trade publications and newspapers along with a variety
of other marketing tactics just for the asking. So, set your goals
to always let your vendors pay for half of your advertising and slash
your budget while increasing your visibility and market awareness.
• Million Dollar E-mails—With technology advancing
at the speed of a bullet, today’s marketers must accept the challenge
of advancing with it. If you have been on the Net for any time, I
am sure you have heard of spam. That is the name for unsolicited commercial
e-mail. Many short-term minded marketers feel that because e-mail
is practically free, they can send out thousands and thousands of
e-mails hoping for a handful of sales while dealing with the risk
involved. I do not think that is a good idea.
There is a huge difference between permission e-mail marketing and
spamming. The fact is, without getting permission, you are just sending
out spam, and that will land you on a dead-end street. Additionally,
there is no need to go down that road when getting permission is easy
once you start using a strategy for opt-in e-mail marketing.
There is a great article by Jim Daniels called, “Bulk E-mail
vs. Opt-in E-mail.” If you send me an e-mail I will be glad to
forward the article to you; however, following are seven ways to collect
e-mail addresses online and off.
1. Pop Ups—A highly effective way to capture e-mails is to create
a pop-up window on your Web site.
2. Subscriber Box—You should prominently provide an e-mail subscriber
box on each of your site’s pages.
3. Post Card—In your post card marketing, which will be discussed
next, you can send out cards and offer an incentive to customers to
send back their e-mail addresses.
4. Contest—It is a great way to capture opt-in e-mail addresses
because these people will want you to have their correct address so
they can be informed when they win.
5. Give Aways (free books, software, etc.)—Give aways or “bribes,”
are highly effective means for capturing e-mails. You need to provide
people with an incentive to give you their e-mail address. People
are becoming more hesitant to hand out their e-mail addresses for
fear of rampant spamming, but if your incentive is good enough you
will get many e-mail addresses upon which to build your distribution
list.
6. Simple Forms—Most companies completely miss an opportunity
to capture e-mail addresses of their customers. Anytime a customer
walks into your business, your people should be trained to get an
e-mail address along with a phone number and address. Also, sales
people should be trained to get these addresses even when they are
on the telephone with customers.
7. Auto Responders—The smart way to run an ad is to use an auto–responder
e-mail address. This way you can capture all the e-mail information
from interested prospects. The auto responder will be set up to automatically
deliver your promotion to people who request it.
• Post Card Marketing—While one of the most cost-effective
strategies for marketing is with post cards, it is also the least
understood tool. There are local companies where you can get your
post cards printed and mailed for the same cost as if you were to
do it yourself . . . a huge money and time saver!
One of the things post cards will allow you to do is stay in front
of the customer. I strongly recommend that you design and work around
a post card campaign—and not just one card, but a series of cards
that deliver a message. Also, you will want to create curiosity in
the beginning. Then you will want to choose who your audience will
be.
All marketing must rely on repetition and post cards are one more
part of that formula that can be done on a shoestring budget. If you
drop me an e-mail, I will forward you an article on post card marketing.
• Master the Telephone—It is the most valuable weapon
in today’s business arsenal. Yet, most of the sales people that
I deal with do not use it effectively. Learn how to master the telephone,
and you can accomplish almost anything in the world of sales. It is
the additional ingredient that is needed in a high-tech, high-touch
world.
• Third Party Endorsements—One of the secrets of
budget marketers is to make themselves available for articles, news
stories and to become spokespersons in trade publications. The combination
of a small ad, along with a story written about you, your company
or your areas of expertise, in which you can help customers, carries
more weight than a pot of gold.
John A. Palumbo, MIRM, is the recipient of the
Sales Manager of the Year Award for the National Sales and Marketing
Council and recipient of the NAHB Lifetime Million Dollar Circle Award
with total sales nearing half-a-billion dollars. He is a nationally
recognized speaker, trainer and Certified Behavior Analyst. Palumbo
is the CEO of The Sterling Group, Inc. and consults in new home sales,
marketing and management. He resides in Jacksonville, FL, and can
be contacted at (904) 641-2043; e-mail PalumboJ@aol.com.
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