Marketing Plan 2011 Samples

March 29, 2011 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Marketing Plans 

A marketing plan helps you establish a timeline for meeting goals, objectives and a game plan for seamless execution.

Preparing a marketing plan forces you to assess what’s going on in your marketplace and how it affects your business. It also provides a benchmark for later measurement. Often, simply embarking on the process of preparing a marketing plan guides you in developing a successful marketing strategy.

Develop the habit on sketching out marketing plans for accomplishing tasks to save time money in bench marking milestones for marketing deadlines and customer cash flow. The degree of success enjoyed by many can be directly attributed to the amount of written life planning they undertake. Create the road map first and follow it. Simple, but very effective. Marketing Plan Pro review

Set goals.

Write them down and keep them in front of you. Know what you’re striving for. Record your goals in your day planner and refer to them often. Set a realistic timeline for the accomplishment of each goal.

Marketing plan contains information about your company and its products, marketing objectives and strategies, as well as how you will measure the success of your marketing activities.

It describes all the marketing activities you will perform during a specified time period (usually one year). you will also include any background information and research results you used to select those marketing activities. Finally, you will document the costs associated with your planned marketing activities as well as the measurements you will use to determine success. See samples here

Break down goals and objectives into basic tasks. It doesn’t matter how large or how small the goal. Any goal may seem like a far-away dream until you break it down into tiny action steps that can be taken immediately. Refining a goal down to it’s most basic task gives you something you can do to today that will move you towards it. If you fail to do this, your goals will only remain distant dreams.

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Direct Mail Copywriting Secrets

March 23, 2011 by · 2 Comments
Filed under: Direct Marketing Mailing 

The best copywriters like the late Gary Halbert or John Carlton will tell you….

..to aim to target prospects with perceived pain and get inside your prospects head to determine the root cause of their pain.

The concept is that people will do anything to avoid pain in it’s many forms. This can be applied to a consumer or business to business marketing models.

A mailer written for a small business owners who manages a small staff of people that during the winter months gets a time period of chronic sickness and absenteeism due to the avoidable spread of infections in the office.

Every year 22 million sick days are lost because of chronic colds and flues chronic sickness and every year 52.2 million cases of he common cold affect over 18 years of age each year.

From this research or facts that you gathered the next step is to tap into the emotions and get them to realize that nothing they are doing will work to solve their problems.

Show them that by improving the hygiene they will benefit measurably from the results like regular hand cleaning have proven to reduce the risk based on employee absenteeism by over 50%.

Because bacteria and viruses can live on surfaces such as desks, door handles and computer equipment for as long as two hours. Conventional hand washing with soap and water offers a degree of protection but it’s not comprehensive to prevent the infections of germs.

Finally you offer a solution to their problem.

You are the small business owner’s savior by coming up with a Alcohol Free Hand Foamer is the most advanced hand cleaner on the market. It kills and offers long lasting protection against 99.9 % of the germs.

Show them the facts on how research by the United States Department of Agriculture has proven and found that you advanced formula contains and advanced active barrier that continues working on the hands after six hours of an application.

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Measuring Direct Mail

March 15, 2011 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Direct Marketing Mailing 

Peter Drucker mentioned that the purpose of business is to create a customer but business cannot survive unless you make a margin. Margins are simply the difference between price and the mailing costs.

Many people that don’t understand direct mail may think it is simplistic on the surface. Once you decide on a list and design your direct mail piece, write a compelling offer after testing your control package over the years. your mailing is dropped at the USPS, the complications of metrics begin to unfold.

Most often we hear direct marketers boasting about response rates to direct mail and emails. While a high response rate is good, sometimes it is only one page to the whole story. This is when measuring direct mail becomes so critical between making a huge profit or closing your doors for business.

There are three results in a direct mail piece to always account for when measuring: Response Rate, Conversion Rate, and ROI. While response and conversion are important, ROI is the highest priority.

Let’s break it down into simple pieces:

Response Rate

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This measurement tells us exactly how many people took action from your direct mail piece. For example, if you were to send out 10,000 pieces and you get 100 responses you have a response rate of 1%.

Measuring a good response rate is specific to the type of list you are sending. If you send a list based on your current customer data you should be looking for a rate of around 25%. For renewals it could be 70% on some magazine subscriptions

Of course, the rates can be much higher than this, and in many cases are. When it comes to current customers, the sky is the limit.

If you are sending to a purchased target list, you can typically expect your response to be around 2% upwards of 3%. This also depends on your offer and copy and how close your lists matches the affinity of the offer.

Conversion Rate

Conversion is essentially the percentage of customers that respond to your mailer and make a purchase. This percentage is of much greater importance than the response rate.

ROI

Return on Investment is at the top of the measurement food chain. There are times when a direct mail piece may generate >.01% conversion, but if the promotion sent out is advertising a high ticket item, how have you really done?Allow me to help you implement your next strategic marketing plan focused on your niche. I will make the most of what you already have by analyzing your biggest strengths and exploiting your competition.

Timothy Little – Direct Marketing Consultant

Tim Little
1 (888) 889-0552

Service Description

Let me use my researched methods that have been proven to work, implementation know-how, and optimization expertise to boost your company’s marketing ROI and sales performance.

EXPERTISE

  • Ability to perform all list brokerage duties for clients, including providing thorough list research and recommendations
  • Back-end analysis, marketing metrics Google Analytics, Market Samuria generates revenue & interest via email marketing, SEO, SEM and social media
  • Can target local business landing pages on Twitter, Facebook, Google Places, Google AdWords and other social networks and track results from coupon offers
  • Accelerates sales by tying email campaign and website tracking to CRM system data
  • Creates and executes marketing strategies that support business goals
  • Lead generation and capture and marketing plan development

LIST BROKER

What I do is help technical services businesses increase sales, keep more customers, and generate more qualified leads. Specializing in complex business-to-business environments.

WordPress Direct Response Website management

  • Internet marketing, SEO
  • PPC, Joint Venture, Event marketing,
  • Customer retention campaigns,
  • Marketing automation and optimization,

Telephone: Call (888) 889-0552 Ask about my Website and Facebook client portfolio

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Direct Marketing Dashboard Metrics

March 9, 2011 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Direct Marketing Strategy 

In Direct Marketing Metrics Numbers rule.

Now more than ever, direct marketers must deliver hard data on how their efforts increased the company’s bottom line.

In these days of lean profits and leaner budgets, a focus on metrics can mean the difference between a making your job highly valuable and one on the brink of extinction.

There’s less agreement, however, on which metrics truly demonstrate ROI and, more importantly, how to get them.

How do you determine the objectives

If it’s a product direct marketing effort (print, web or sales walk-in) we meet with the appropriate overall objective/goal.

Make your goals clear and measurable

Marketing needs to increase analog device sales by 10% over the next two business quarters and we can gain this extra 10% through existing customers that we identify as a viable target utilizing our in-house database.

Determine the objectives….

of the effort we go to the heart of the request – if marketing approaches us to do a mailer, we dig deeper to find out what the underlying business goal is and then we make the determination if a mailer is the appropriate communications medium to meet this goal.

What metrics do you use in your direct marketing dashboard?

I measure just about everything that can be measured from a direct marketing effort. Specific examples of measure:

Overall response rate to the media

Hits to landing page (we drive responses through our web site)

Referral links from landing page to other informational web pages

Cost of the effort

Return on Investment

– cost calculated against leads and/or business brought in
Number of product/design registrations


Has having solid ROI data helped you gain (or keep) your marketing budget?

If the effort is directed at existing customers we’ll measure any additional business or market share; if the effort is directed at new prospective customers we’ll measure quality of lead and this is done usually through our call-out/telemarketing account development group.

Choose a certain medium in most cases and that is direct marketing print mail/materials (either directly mailed to customers or prospects, or sent to our field sales representatives to hand deliver to customers or prospects). The print mailers almost always direct the recipient to respond via our web site.

What are the first steps you take to make sure marketing activities are measurable?

1. Understand the goal/objective behind the requested marketing activity.
2. Once the objective is understood, choose correct marketing activity for the goal.
3. Outline the measurable components of the marketing activity.
4. Commit and uphold commitment to reporting and reporting schedule.

To sum it up in one word, yes. This is especially true when it comes to keeping or obtaining new budgets from our supplier-partners.

How do you determine the objectives of the marketing effort?

Building a history of the client’s past marketing strategies, objectives, implementation and experience (results) as well as researching the industries are our first work-effort towards defining objectives.

What metrics do you use to determine the effectiveness of the effort?

Do you choose certain media because they are more measurable and if so which ones?

What are the first steps you take to make sure marketing activities are measurable?

My professional direct marketing experience began in magazine circulation management from this I honed my skills in list purchasing, testing, and analyzing.

I learned the importance of direct response planning and budget forecasting and most importantly, providing a follow-up with back-end analysis, fulfillment of orders and inquiries. I also gained some valuable job experience with Jackson National Life Insurance as Marketing Database/Direct Mail area.

Allow me to help you implement your next strategic marketing plan focused on your niche. I will make the most of what you already have by analyzing your biggest strengths and exploiting your competition.

Timothy Little – Direct Marketing Consultant

Tim Little
1 (888) 889-0552

Service Description

Let me use my researched methods that have been proven to work, implementation know-how, and optimization expertise to boost your company’s marketing ROI and sales performance.

EXPERTISE

  • Ability to perform all list brokerage duties for clients, including providing thorough list research and recommendations
  • Back-end analysis, marketing metrics Google Analytics, Market Samuria generates revenue & interest via email marketing, SEO, SEM and social media
  • Can target local business landing pages on Twitter, Facebook, Google Places, Google AdWords and other social networks and track results from coupon offers
  • Accelerates sales by tying email campaign and website tracking to CRM system data
  • Creates and executes marketing strategies that support business goals
  • Lead generation and capture and marketing plan development

LIST BROKER

What I do is help technical services businesses increase sales, keep more customers, and generate more qualified leads. Specializing in complex business-to-business environments.

WordPress Direct Response Website management

  • Internet marketing, SEO
  • PPC, Joint Venture, Event marketing,
  • Customer retention campaigns,
  • Marketing automation and optimization,

Telephone: Call (888) 889-0552 Ask about my Website and Facebook client portfolio

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Direct Marketing Metrics

March 2, 2011 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Direct Marketing Strategy 

Measurement

.. is everything in direct marketing without accounting you will become are throwing dollars away.

Direct marketers have always been measurement-oriented and in this economy this is even more important. We helped to evolve metrics and the now popular term ROI. We set up all our campaigns to be measurable, and we test incessantly—at least on the consumer side.

Business to business direct marketers have more trouble with measurement, for many reasons maybe sales people don’t want to be bothered reporting back to marketing about sales results.

The high maintenance of direct response

The challenges of a series of contacts with business prospects and the pain in the ass testing involved. A campaign might involved 5 emails, 3 letters, a webinar, an executive conference invitation, a golf outing and 4 sales calls. How can you ever determine which touches were essential to the sale? Or which were most impactful? It’s a rare firm that has the patience and discipline to set up controlled experiments to test all the variables involved.

Metrics is the answer

A few key metrics that are fairly simple to gather and analyze. Well, not simple, exactly. But at least straightforward. Let’s review the essential metrics for B-to-B direct marketers.

Response rate
For direct marketers, response rates are fairly easy to capture through a variety of media, by using a key code, or a unique landing page or toll free number.

The problem with response rate as a metric is that it doesn’t tell you much about campaign effectiveness. There are simply too many variables involved: the list, the offer, the creative—you know the drill.

Cost per lead
Perhaps the most fundamental metric in business marketing communications, cost per lead is calculated by dividing campaign cost by the number of leads resulting from the campaign. Sounds simple, right? If only. The conundrum with this metric is the denominator: Should you divide by campaign inquiries or by qualified leads?

lead generation

the true test of a marketing campaign’s worth is its ability to provide the sales organization with qualified leads. It’s these leads that improve sales force productivity, reduce cold calling, and increase the amount of time sales people can spend in front of prospects who are actually in the market.

Direct marketers assess campaign results on the “front end.” To understand your ability to get prospects to raise their hands and express initial interest in your product or service.

Inquiry-to-lead conversion rate
The qualification criteria are developed in concert with sales management, and define the characteristics of a prospect that will allow the sales force to work the lead effectively.

Lead-to-sales conversion rates
Try to determine at what rates will they do so If the lead-to-sales rate declines, who’s responsible? Is sales falling down on the job? Or did marketing deliver inferior leads? This metric can shed some light on this age-old debate.

Expense-to-revenue ratio
To summarize campaign effectiveness, marketers need some kind of conclusive metric, such as ROI. But in B-to-B environments, when campaign revenues are often sizable compared to campaign expense, ROI is problematic. The lead generation campaign is often a very small part of the entire cost of sales.

EXPERTISE

  • Ability to perform all list brokerage duties for clients, including providing thorough list research and recommendations
  • Back-end analysis, marketing metrics Google Analytics, Market Samuria generates revenue & interest via email marketing, SEO, SEM and social media
  • Can target local business landing pages on Twitter, Facebook, Google Places, Google AdWords and other social networks and track results from coupon offers
  • Accelerates sales by tying email campaign and website tracking to CRM system data
  • Creates and executes marketing strategies that support business goals
  • Lead generation and capture and marketing plan development

LIST BROKER

What I do is help technical services businesses increase sales, keep more customers, and generate more qualified leads. Specializing in complex business-to-business environments.

WordPress Direct Response Website management

  • Internet marketing, SEO
  • PPC, Joint Venture, Event marketing,
  • Customer retention campaigns,
  • Marketing automation and optimization,

Telephone: Call (888) 889-0552 Ask about my Website and Facebook client portfolio

Email address: Tim G. Little

References and Project Portfolio will be Provided on Request

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