Marketing on a Budget
Lee Levitt
Managing Director
In today’s turbulent economic client,
marketing budgets are small or non-existent, yet sales quotas remain as
high as ever and the infrastructure monster (burn rate for those of us
that lived through the venture boom of the ‘90s) needs to be fed constant
revenues. What’s a savvy tech marketer to do?
Things aren’t as bad as they appear. If
you’re still in business and actually generating revenues, you’re sitting
on valuable assets. Get off your assets and put them to work for you!
Here are five simple tips for putting
those assets to work:
Ask your existing customers for more
business
Doh!
This is so obvious that nobody does it.
And we’re not talking about sending the sales team out to beg for more
business…instead, we’re talking about a formalized approach to touch your
customers periodically, reminding them of what you do and asking them for
referrals.
Do this through several methods – first,
hold an internal account planning session for each of your larger
customers. Determine what you’ve done well for them and where you might be
able to do some additional work.
Then hold an account review with your
customer. Review your relationship and remind them of your range of
products and services. They may not be aware of everything you have to
offer. Ask them for referrals into other companies – “do you know any
firms that could benefit from the type of products or services we provided
to you?”
These internal and client-focused account
reviews should be done quarterly. In larger companies these reviews are a
way of life, and help to ensure long-term profitable relationships with
good customers. Sure, customers may want to talk about the problems in the
relationship…take this opportunity to properly address the problems and to
strengthen the relationship. If you avoid discussing the problems,
customers will simply discuss them with your competition, and they’ll have
the opportunity to address the problems and to strengthen their
relationship with your customer!
Establish a periodic customer newsletter
Email or paper, weekly, monthly or
quarterly, it doesn’t matter. Do it often enough that customers get
accustomed to receiving valuable information from you…but not so often
that putting it together becomes onerous. You want to remain “top-of-mind”
with your customers and prospects.
You may be able to outsource some or all
of this activity…in fact some industries have newsletter providers that
provide standard newsletters for many customers, simply putting their name
on the end product.
Make sure that you provide information
of value…and be innovative.
Foley Engines,
a marine engine distributor founded in 1916, stuffs each box shipped with
Foley “Tech Tip”, a card that has a specific technical tip useful to the
recipient. These technical tips proved so valuable to the customer base
that when Foley Engines moved to the web in 1997 (www.foleyengines.com),
the Tech Tips library became the most highly trafficked portion of the
website. The Foley Tech Tips has become a major differentiator for the
company, and the total cost to the company of writing and printing the
tech tips over the years was in the hundreds of dollars.
Partner with complementary service
providers
Why create a market from scratch when
someone else has already built credibility and relationships in that
market. We put one such relationship together…MediaPoint,
an early stage technology company (www.mediapt.net)
providing business continuity services with
The McCarthy
Companies, a well-established insurance brokerage firm (www.cjmccarthy.com).
The McCarthy Companies conducted a direct mail campaign to its installed
base of several thousand small and medium size businesses, introducing
them to MediaPoint and offering a discount on business insurance if they
had a business continuity service provider.
This represented a win-win situation for
everyone. The insurance brokerage firm introduced its clients to an
important new service and the tech company gained access to several
thousand prospects.
Test, test, test
Test various methods endlessly and talk
with your fellow marketers about what’s working and what’s not. Case in
point – up until about two years ago, breakfast seminars offered the
highest ROI in marketing. Today they’re worthless…and the only way for you
to learn this without spending 3 months and countless thousands of dollars
is to find out what’s working for your peers (and competitors).
You may
also learn that a current hot (and inexpensive) approach involves small
targeted direct mail campaigns using postcards or white papers.
Network like crazy
But network with a purpose. Don’t go to
networking events in search of prospects…you’ll be labeled a pariah and
avoided at all costs. Instead, plan to meet complementary product or
service providers that can provide you introductions to their contacts and
customers.
Go armed with a good “elevator pitch” that describes what you
do and motivates and inspires others to introduce you to their contacts
and customers. Share with them why you’re in business and help them to
provide good strong referrals. And make sure that you’re giving as much as
you’re getting…in fact you’ll get more as you give more.
In summary, success in marketing these
days takes good out-of-the-box thinking and strong implementation.
Approach marketing as a science rather than as a series of unconnected
activities and you’ll have a shot at success.
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Comments on this article
appreciated
Article Copyright 2002,
The Acelera Group. All rights reserved.
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