Cost Effective, Not Expensive

(This is the continuation of a previous post.)  You’re probably wondering how I could pull this plan off without going broke in the process. We’re looking at Cost Effective, Not Expensive.  Actually, it is easy to calculate exactly how much everything would cost, as well as to accurately project the expected results.

Jack would have to put $500 into building Mark two closet organizers – one for his home, and one for the store display. Then he’d have to pay $200 for the first test mailing. Assuming he can sell 3 out of 100 prospects, he would net six sales from the test mailing.

Mark would get $300 from their agreement, and Jack would earn about $900 in gross profits. That means that Jack would be $100 behind after the test mailing. But don’t forget to calculate the results from the rest of the mailing list! Assuming the same averages, Jack would make 36 more sales from the remaining 1,200 names. After paying Mark his $1,800 and subtracting $600 for printing and postage, he would net something like $4,800!

The next step (which almost no one does) is to calculate the “what-if’s”. What if they could write a letter that pulled 4 or 5 or 10 responses per 100. What if they turned around and mailed the same letter to the names that didn’t buy the first time? What if they duplicated their success with 25 other stores in the state?

Now you can start to see how marketing can offer your business tremendous financial leverage.

NOW, THE RESULTS. . .

Sadly, Jack was unwilling to even try the direct-mail idea. “I just can’t afford to lose another $1,500 in the mail,” he said after politely listening to my suggestions. What he didn’t understand is that it isn’t necessarily what you do; it’s how you do it. Execution is all-important!  My guess is that Jack will continue to flagrantly disregard the five simple profit-enhancing strategies that would bring his company out of mediocrity and into greatness. Working 12 hour days for something barely above minimum wage must be his idea of how to run a business.

As a conclusion to this story, and preparatory for the rest of this report, I’ll give you the five deceivingly simple marketing concepts that almost every business can profit from immediately without spending any extra money. Remember, execution and articulation is everything. Even if you already use some of the strategies, look for new applications.

• Articulating and implementing a Unique Selling Proposition (USP) into every facet of your marketing.
• Testing advertisements and marketing ideas before rolling out huge, expensive campaigns (almost nobody really tests).
• Using headlines, telling reasons why, emphasizing guarantees, and ten other important parts of writing good advertisements.
• Working the back-end: turning one-shot sales into an ongoing stream of income.
• Using joint ventures with other companies to leverage your marketing dollars.

The idea is to broaden your marketing perspective and allow you to take advantage of opportunities that may have been right in front of your eyes for years. For 95% of all small businesses (and medium ones, too), I can guarantee that those opportunities are abundant and waiting to be seized.

Tomorrow I’ll continue with “Never Make a Major Marketing Blunder Again”