Question

Topic: Strategy

What Are The Top 3 Marketing Approaches?

Posted by Anonymous on 6/29/2005 at 11:16 AM ET 250 Points
We are a small (less than 1MM) established industrial general line electronics disty, and need to at least double our sales volume. Our small size tends to make advantages open to larger volume distributors unavailable to us. We have a token web site (www.irsupply.com), and one part time sales person. Marketing $ are quite limited. What are the 3 top best methods for us to generate sales growth.
To continue reading this question and the solution, sign up ... it's free!
SUBSCRIBE
Or, SIGN IN

RESPONSES

  • Posted on 6/29/2005 at 9:37 PM Member
    Doubling your sales volume with very limited marketing dollars is not a realistic objective. It's not going to happen, no matter how clever you are or how many good ideas we dump into the hopper.

    If you double your sales volume, you'll have the money to pay for the marketing efforts that generated that growth. And if you're confident it can be done, you should be willing to take out a second mortgage to finance the project up-front. If that sounds like too great a risk, maybe it is ... and your goal is as unrealistic as it sounds.

    The "top idea" is to redefine the goal and/or find the funds to finance it. There's no free lunch.

    Sorry to have to be the bearer of the bad news.
  • Posted by Pepper Blue on 6/30/2005 at 10:55 AM Accepted
    Hi Warren,

    These are the three I suggest you explore as they are affordable and produce quick, measurable and improvable results. Most businesses should be practicing these or at least look into them as part of a good never-ending marketing program that constantly tries new things.

    1) Develop and implement an e-newsletter to send to your
    existing customers. 80% of your business is probably coming from 20% of your customers, and 80% of them are probably only buying 20% of what they could be if you used email marketing to stay in consistent and constant contact using specials and other value-added information to drive them either to your store or to your website.

    Don't direct people to your home page. Once you develop your email marketing campaign, develop landing page(s) to support it.

    Encourage them to forward your email marketing to people they know who also might benefit from them.

    2) Develop a new website in large part to support your email marketing. Get rid of the loading and splash page.

    Find a local freelance person, they will charge you about 1/4 of what a web development company will. Don't go crazy with it, you just need more than you currently have because your current site adds little value and you could benefit just by giving it a new look and beefing up your content.

    3) You might want to look at local search and even a geo-targeted Google pay-per-click, targeting Iowa, Southern Wisconsin and Northern Illinois. Local search is free and geo-targeted PPC ads can be very cost effective, it is definitely worth looking into.

    A caveat, Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing are not as simple as they will lead you to believe, you do need to understand how to make them "work" so this will either involve a learning curve on your part or hiring a PPC expert. Again, look for inexpensive local talent.

    Good marketing doesn't have to cost a lot, but you do need to spend something and you need to plan and strategize it so that your components leverage and provide a synergy with each other. This is smart marketing and is how you get the most bang for your buck.

    I hope that helps.
BACK TO TOP

Post a Comment

Related Discussions

Community Info

Top 25 Experts
(Strategy)