Brian Tracy: Enhance Your Marketing Strategy, Increase Your Sales

What is the purpose of your business?

Do you have a qualitymarketing strategy in place to keep customers coming back?

Do you know who your customers are?

These are some important questions to ask when evaluating your overall marketing strategy.

Here are some ideas and questions to ask yourself that you can use today to improve the overall goals and sales in your business.

WHAT IS THE PURPOSE YOUR BUSINESS?

Many people think that the purpose of a business is simply to make a profit, but this is not the case. All the efforts of a successful business are aimed at creating customers in some way. Profits are the result of creating and keeping customers in a cost-effective way over time.

The cost of creating customers initially is very high. The cost of keeping them is far lower than the cost of creating them in the first place. If you study the companies that are the most efficient at marketing, you will find that their strategies are all aimed at creating customers and then holding onto them.

HIGH QUALITY AS A MARKETING STRATEGY

Perhaps the most profitable marketing strategy is that of developing your products or services to a high level of quality. Quality is the most powerful and effective of all marketing strategies.

90 percent of your business success will be determined by the quality of what you produce in the first place. People will always buy from a quality supplier, pay higher prices, and return over and over again to a company that provides them with high-quality goods and services.

Perhaps the best definition of a brand, which is your reputation in the marketplace, is “the promises you make and the promises you keep.” Your quality rating is determined by what percentage of the time your product or service delivers on the promises you made to attract your customer to buy in the first place.

It is not only the product itself, but it is the way that you treat your customers from the first contact through to their entire time with you using your product or service. People will always come back to a quality supplier of goods and services, no matter what the price.

YOUR CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT

There is another critical factor in marketing success, and that has to do with relationships. More and more today we are finding that it is the quality of business relationships that determines whether or not we create and keep a substantial number of customers.

When people purchase something, what percent is logical and what percent is emotional? People are 100 percent emotional. They decide emotionally and then they justify logically. It is how they feel, and especially how they believe they will feel after the purchase that determines whether they make the purchase at all.”

Customers will be loyal to a business that they have a relationship with. The quality of the relationships that you create with your customers will determine the success or failure of your business.

SALES SUCCESS THROUGH CUSTOMER RETENTION

Do you know how much you spend to acquire a new customer? The costs associated with acquiring customers will determine the success of your business. What does customer retention mean to you?

Each company is in the business of “buying customers.” Each company has a specific “cost-of-acquisition,” whether they know what that is or not.

Your cost-of-acquisition is composed of all of the monies that you pay to any person, in any way, to buy a customer for the first time. A company stays in business if it can buy customers at a lower amount than the net profit that the customer will yield to the company in the course of the customer’s buying lifetime.

If your company can buy customers at a lower cost than the profit you can earn from that customer, you can spend almost any amount, to buy more and more customers. This is one of the great secrets of business success, and it is a core requirement for effective marketing.

IDENTIFY YOUR TARGET MARKET NOW

Today, your goal is to identify your target market, your ideal or perfect customer, and then think of something to offer that customer, something unique and special that no other competitor can offer.

This enables you to create meaningful differentiation that allows you to sell more, and often at higher prices than your competition. Meaningful differentiation is the key to making you the first choice in your market for that particular type and description of the customer.

MAKE YOUR MARKETING STRATEGY WORK FOR YOU

No marketing effort exists in isolation. It always exists in comparison with what else is available to the same customer for the same amount of money. There will always be competition. Write down what will make you and your marketing efforts unique.

To be successful in your marketing strategy you must be continually focusing on your customer and on what they want today and also on what they will want tomorrow while keeping your eye on your competitor and being aware of what your competitor is doing, or is likely to do, to attract the same customer.