Direct Promotion Techniques

February 2006

One-to-one marketing follows the 80/20 Rule: 80% of your business comes from 20% of your customers. Focus your marketing efforts on those 20% highly responsive individuals and you can increase response rate and thereby increase sales. Let's put a similar tactic to work to acquire NEW customers.

promotion techniquesPLAN TO WIN!

Online marketing can be a little different than traditional marketing. First and foremost, you need a method to collect data from your website. This can be a third party solution or a simple web form depending on your budget. Third party solutions can range from high-end CRM systems or email marketing solutions that will collect information and perform the email communications at the same time.

Secondly, you need a plan to drive new business to the site. (Search engines, traditional advertising, PPC, Banner ads, etc.) The more focused your plan, the more business you can hope to gain. Don't try to attract the general population to your web site; target individuals based on criteria that may pre-qualify them as potential customers. Using search engine marketing, this is fairly easy. You can target your ad based on specific search queries.

Then you put it all together... place your ad, drive traffic, collect data. Once the data is collected; you can use email marketing or direct mail to further cultivate leads and sales from the interest you generated.

ATTRACTING CUSTOMERS:

Your website sells pet supplies. You have a variety of products but instead of advertising "pet supplies"; you focus on specific customers using ads and landing pages geared to "cat toys", "dog food" and products you believe will attract the most leads.

Your landing pages should specifically advertise the product and give the visitor only a couple options such as:

  1. Make a purchase immediately
  2. Submit information about themselves

CAPTURE INFORMATION:

In order to get visitors to submit information like name, address, email and interests, you may need to entice them with a discount, coupon or other incentive. Remember: too many options will dilute the effectiveness of your campaign.... keep it focused. You've captured their interest... now it's time to take names!

CONVERT PROSPECTS TO CUSTOMERS:

If visitors act on either option; you've gained a prospect that is highly responsive. Since they have already shown enough interest to visit your site; submit information or make a purchase; you want to aggressively market to these leads.

Your Mission: Attract, Capture and CONVERT!

Kick it up a notch...

Using the technique above, you can fine-tune your plan to include:

Tracking: Tracking your leads is an important step; perhaps not for this promotion but for all future promotions. The information you get from knowing your click rate, conversion rate and visitor actions is extremely valuable in developing the plan for the next campaign. Using a third party product that tracks this information (LeadTracks) can help you realize a higher level of success over the long term.

Data Mining : After you've collected leads from a successful campaign, you can use technology that allows you to sort and filter your leads. This gives you the freedom to segregate your customer data and tailor your offers - you have the power to achieve astonishing response rates by effective targeting. Email marketing solutions such as Targetware can help you collect and filter leads AND deliver your message all at the same time.

Article By:
Anita Schott,
SEO Expert and Contributing Writer
Instant Position

Need help pulling together a campaign like we've described? Let the G3 Group help you plan and execute a highly targeted campaign - the G3 Group has the search engine marketing experts and proprietary technology that will deliver maximum results for your business.