Marketing Advertising

Marketing - advertising or spam?

Marketing is the word that we hear every time we start promoting a new product or service. When I tried to understand this word marketing, trying to find out what is behind it and what to require from such a specialist as a marketer. My first step in this area began with the fact that I just opened the Internet and found the definition of this word, then I started to open the following sites and found a lot of interesting and contradictory. The most absurd from my point of view was the definition given by the Catholic Church, I quote: "Marketing is a love for one's neighbor, with whom you receive God's grace in the form of profit."

However, I found a simpler and more convenient definition to date: "Marketing is attracting and retaining the customer." In its own words, this can be interpreted as follows: marketing is all that you do to help sell a product or service and make it so that The client has returned to you again.

Thus, as a businessman, I concluded that marketing is what increases the sales ratio and my profit.

After that, the question arose: "Is it possible to live without marketing? Can I live without tracking his work on increasing sales? "

I want to give you one fairly vivid example, which I read in one of the books on business, including marketing.

So one day at a conference on marketing and sales, the presenter asked a direct question to the audience: "Please raise your hands to those who think that he does not need marketing, that he is doing well and he will live well without it." Of course, he knows the answer to this question and expects from the audience that they will answer "No", but ... one of the participants raised his hand. The facilitator was surprised and approached this person and asked the question: "What are you doing?" To which the seminar participant replied: "I am the owner of the Suez Canal".

If you own the Suez Canal, then you probably do not need marketing, because you are the only one in your niche and you do not have an alternative in the market. But if you are in a niche where demand is many times greater than supply, in this case you should be more careful, because this situation is changing very quickly.

Usually, when you enter a niche where you do not have competition, then after a while you still have someone who comes and does the same, but not much better than you, not much more modern and this gives your clients a chance to leave to him.

Thus, if you have a monopoly - you do not need marketing, but if your business is in any other category, then marketing is necessary for you.

However, before moving to the strategy and tactics to increase the sales ratio, you first need to start measuring them, if you have not already done so - start.

All that you do not measure, you do not control!

That is, in practice it looks like this, you start to introduce some new technology and at the same time do not measure the indicators, in this case you will represent what effect you got, at the level of "good" or "bad", nothing more. To build a successful business requires accurate measurements and recording of these indicators - in fact, these are statistics. The graphs clearly show which area right now requires your attention or which area you are happy with.

Athletes and coaches have long known and are a constant practice - measuring results. How many ran today, how many ran yesterday and the emphasis is put on a gradual increase, which in the end results in victory and success.

How to measure results correctly and effectively

A serious mistake is that you start simultaneously implementing different chips.

For example: You started distributing advertising at the metro and at the same time you started the sale. The average check for the week grew by 10%, but you do not know exactly what caused this growth.

Or: you simultaneously advertised in several target magazines and newspapers. The check again increased by 10%, but what exactly gave such a result you do not know. And in the future you will not be able to strengthen it.

Therefore, we do the following:

We measure up to, we introduce one tool of increasing sales, we measure after, we draw the corresponding conclusions, we undertake the following.

First, select in your business three main sources of customers. For example: site, flyer, advertising in the newspaper or on the radio, etc.

1. Calculate how many potential customers come to you or call?

2. How many of them are making a purchase?

3. What is the average cost of these purchases?

4. How often does the client make a purchase from you in a month?

   Try to apply this data in your business right now.