Get a marketing path that works

A NEW industry around Marketing Technology, Data Analytics and the push for ROI has created low cost software that allows even small and medium sized businesses to benefit and understand their sales and marketing like never before.

Through a series of interviews, million dollar ad campaigns, research and analysis  I show you that combining and properly tracking traditional and digital sales together deliver lower cost marketing with outstanding sales results.  We’ve rounded up some of the details so you can see why using these types of media together can help you undertand and pinpoint what’s working best to help you grow.Have you ever noticed that there are lots of different Geico ads out there with different themes and different messaging. You know, the Cave Man, the Gecko, etc. There’s a reason for that and it’s a strategy that you need to start using right away.

Most companies are only using digital or only using traditional or they aren’t working together if you do use both. That’s a big mistake. Even if you don’t consider yourself a digital genius you need to use some of the very easy to learn tactics on software platforms like that have now become almost free.  These simple online strategies can dramatically increase your marketing and advertising.

Here we’ll break down the basics and include some of the tools you need to use and how to get your plan started today.

• Step 1: Preparation
• Step 2: Getting Started
• Step 3: Analyzing the results

Yep. It’s a three step process that will change the way you view marketing, advertising and sales for the better.

STEP 1: PREPARATION

The first step to get going is to get your mind right. There is a lot of data out there, a lot of misinformation from marketers trying to sell you something and lot of confusion because of the explosion of marketing, advertising and sales content online.

I like to go right to the epicenter of wealth creation and the institution that is studying and teaching the most effective marketing based on new ways of thinking that are backed by lots of tests with real companies: Stanford University in Silicon Valley. The ideas I’m going to share with you are born from Stanford Professor, Steve Blank and been refined and tested to improve results by Eric Reiss, author of The Lean Startup, Ash Maurya, author of Running Lean and myself, a seasoned marketer and advertiser who has over 20 years of entrepreneur and marketing experience with small and larger brands like Little Caesars Pizza, Toyota, Budwieser and many many more.

So you may have noticed the work “Lean” used in a few of the authors titles. The term “Lean” comes from the manufacturing sector. It originated in Japan with Toyota but what started out as a novelty term to “eliminate waste” has developed into a fully developed set of steps that are being applied to all industries and industry sectors. For this article we’ll focus primarily on how to eliminate waste in your marketing, advertising so you can conserve limited resources to win more customers and grow your sales.

Below I’ve included the 5 inherent principals in any “Lean” system. I’ll then show you how to adapt and use them in your marketing and advertising.

1. Correctly specify value so you are providing what the customer actually wants.
2. Identify the value stream for each product or service and remove the wasted steps that don’t create value but do create muda (waste)
3. Make the remaining value-creating steps flow continuously to drastically shorten throughput times
4. Allow the customer to pull value from your rapid-response value streams as needed (rather than pushing products toward the customer on the basis of forecasts)
5. Never relax until you reach perfection, which is the delivery of pure value instantaneously with zero muda.

It really comes down to the fact that you don’t know what your customer wants and you need to find ways to quickly test and gather that information to produce better products and services while you eliminate waste. You probably think you know but you don’t. If you truly believe that you know what your customers want, all of the time, then stop reading now and go put on your dinosaur costume because that type of thinking is what I was referring to when I said you have to get your mind right.

We’ve been hearing for a while how the internet is democratizing everything. What does that mean? It means that people are making millions of votes everyday by clicking on articles, buy now buttons, videos, images, music and anything with a link.

In oder to get your mind right your thinking needs to be where the best and brightest minds are and that includes: 1) Your customers are the source of your information. 2) You need to set up a system to listen to your customers votes with clicks online. 3) Then use this data to guide your decisions.

STEP 2: GETTING STARTED

I’m not going to spend a ton of time here because there is so much information online to help with the actual tools needed. Once you’ve read the entire article come back and click here to make your exact choices based on budget and preference. There are a lot of choices and in order to know which ones to start with it comes down to a basic understanding of how the traditional buying funnel has changed and how marketing automation works.

Search has changed the process

Here is how the buying funnel has evolved over the last several decades. Because of research that can be done online buyers are less reliant on the sellers of products for information to help them make their buying decisions.

Get a marketing path that works

Now let’s get down to the nuts and bolts.

STEP 3: ANALYZING THE RESULTS

This is an area that seems daunting and is hard to know where to. But it’s easy. It’s called Google Analytics. You can embed or analyze almost anything. From there you can add free or low cost tools to fill in the gaps. As your start to analyze the small amounts of data you are gathering to start you will see patterns and quickly understand your customers so you can create a user experience that really delivers something of value and you will have happy and reliable customers.