Observe Your Market Not Your Bottom Line

Just the other week I had one of my clients send some of their team members out to observe their target audience. The results that were brought back to the table was invaluable on a number of levels. It helped them learn more about the type of people their reaching, it forced them to look outside of themselves, and it opened discussion on ways to improve their service.

When was the last time that you made observations of your market? Actually moved beyond basic demographics that you pulled up from some list provider, and tried to understand the psychographics of your customer. What are their buying habits? Where do they like to shop? What do they do during their free time? What type of personality do they have? What values do they live by? As a small business, you don't have the money to engage a market research firm to do in depth analysis. However, that doesn't mean you have to do business with your head in the ground. Take some time this week and go where your people are and just observe. Believe me, you'll learn something new about your market every time you do this.

Keep It High Touch!

-Ernie DiMalanta

Email Optimization: How Simple Changes Increase Open Rates, Clickthrough, Response, and Average Order Size

Article shared from Marketing Profs...

Email marketing is likely your most effective tool for improving customer relationships, building brand awareness, and generating sales. It is also the most abused one.

Practitioners of knee-jerk planning rely on emails to bolster a sagging month or fill in the holes left when other marketing techniques miss their mark. Even though it works (which is why it is abused), there is a price to be paid.

Customers become disenchanted when they receive numerous emails promoting one sale after another or one product over and over. Everyone's threshold is different. Some may opt out after a week, others a month, and still others a year or more. (Note: there tends to be a jump in opt outs at the

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Keep It High Touch!

-Ernie DiMalanta

Second Quarter Pep Talk

Has it occurred to you yet that we're already starting the second quarter of 2009? For many of you who are still trying to determine what you're doing with your marketing, I'm here to tell you that you're behind... And that's no April fools joke!

I figure that for those who are working a marketing plan that today is a good day for a pep talk!

Let's start with evaluating the past three months. How was business? Are your sales numbers low? How do they compare with last year's numbers? What tactics did you implement? Was it the same or different than last year's first quarter tactics? Have you figured out your return on investment yet? Determine your cost per lead, cost per opportunity, cost per win. Isolate areas of weaknesses and strengths.

OK. Remember, we're entering the second quarter of the game. If you haven't put up any points on the board yet, then it's time to tweak your game plan a bit to close the half with some small victories. What are some of the issues that you have to address? Is there a line up change that needs to be made? Is it time to rely on your defense or is it time for an all out aggressive assault? What are you doing to build momentum? Initiate incentives for your staff to increase revenue generating opportunities. Post visible, achievable goals that everyone can see. Drop tactics that are obviously not yielding expected results and launch new campaigns.

Lastly, envision what success looks like in 2009. First accept that it probably won't look the same as previous years, and keep in mind that you still have three quarters to achieve that success. Also, don't forget to celebrate small victories along the way. There's a lot of time, energy, and resources involved to achieving those victories...You want to encourage success, not stifle it.

Keep it High Touch!

-Ernie DiMalanta