Your 2025 marketing plan is actually two parts:
a: defining your true customer base
b: marketing to those customer segments.
Defining your customer base
Mike Ratchford, (mikeratchford50@gmail.com) one of the best marketing idea guys I know, and I came up with the “Bull’s Eye” approach to marketing:
The Bull’s Eye is your client base – these are people and companies who own a maintenance plan. They are loyal to you and you are loyal to them. They know and trust you. They will read your marketing messages in slow and busy times. Your clients are likely to buy as long as you give them a good reason to.
The next ring out is your customer base – these are people and companies who have purchased from you in the past; perhaps many times. There is NO loyalty. They may use you again. They may see a competitor’s truck in their neighborhood and try that company the next time. They may read your marketing messages because they have familiarity with your company; especially when those messages are frequent (but not annoyingly constant). The goal is to turn customers into clients.
The third ring out is prospects – these are people who have communicated with in the past but have not purchased yet. They may have asked for a proposal, inquired about your pricing, seen a truck and called but not set an appointment, or received a marketing message from you in the past. They probably will not read marketing messages except in times of need.
The fourth ring out is suspects – these are people who may or may not know about your company but could be customers (age of home, income level, etc. are right). They have no trust, don’t know you and won’t read your marketing messages unless it is hot or cold and they have a need.
Last is the general population – these are the people who may or may not ever use your company. They haven’t heard about you. They may live in apartments or could never be customers. This is an unfocused group scattered throughout your marketing area and beyond.
Your marketing activities should start with clients and if there is enough money in the budget, move to customers, then to prospects, and if there is money left, then to suspects. Marketing to the general population is almost always a waste of money because the results are tiny. Leave general marketing to the manufacturers who have “big bucks” and can afford the expense of general population marketing.
Look at your client, customer, and prospect bases – how many people are in each category? This is the basis for your 2025 marketing plan.
Marketing to those customer segments
Many of you “try marketing.” You decide to send a postcard, place an ad in a newspaper, or buy radio or television advertising. You do it once and when you don’t get great results, you decide that “it didn’t work.” You are targeting the general population rather than your clients and customers.
Or, you put together a Facebook Fan Page, Instagram, LinkedIn or Twitter profile, and don’t invest the time in these social media tools, and as a result, “marketing doesn’t work.”
You’re right – if you do it once to the wrong customer segment. You have wasted your money and time. Marketing does take planning, a monetary investment, and tracking results.
One of my clients “bit the bullet” three years ago and put together a real plan and executed the plan. The first year the results weren’t great. But, he kept going. The second year the results were better. He was even more encouraged. The third year, this year, his comment to me was, “It takes three years to really see results.” New customers, retained customers, and profits have increased dramatically. He’s finally seeing the results of three years of effort.
A few of you love marketing and have invested the time and are seeing the results like my clients have. You know about patience. You probably don’t say much because you don’t want your competitors to start investing more marketing dollars and giving your customers another company to check out.
By now some of you are probably thinking, “I don’t have the time to do all of this.”
The really good news is you don’t have to do the marketing yourself! Hire someone who can do it for you. Or, hire several people who can do it for you. Sometimes that person is your 20 something daughter who has grown up with social media and lives on line. And, your daughter probably knows more about your business than you think because she has listened to you talk about business at the dinner table.
Decide what you want to do which is determined by finding out how your customers prefer to be contacted (younger generation usually email and texts; older generation usually direct mail and newspapers); NOT by what you see your competition doing.
Remember to have patience when results aren’t stellar the very first time. You will see results. Invest in marketing. It does work.
Take a simple Excel spread sheet – put the activities you want to do on the Y axis, segmenting by customer type, and the weeks of the year on the X-axis. Then put an “x” in the box of the week you will execute a marketing activity.
Post this sheet to remind you (and everyone who sees it) what the marketing plan is for 2025.
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