Where do you spend your marketing dollars?

I have many clients who only spent money on Yellow Pages ads before I got to them.  Many spend tens of thousands of dollars per year on phone book ads, but they don’t know the return on that investment.  My usual question when I find this out is, “How much do you spend marketing to your existing customer base?”  Many times the answer is $0.00!

I have found (and studies have shown) that it is more cost effective to get more business from your previous and current customers than it is to get business from people who don’t know you.  With that said, I do not advocate that you focus all your budget on your existing base.  It makes most sense to divide your budget evenly, but you will see much more money from past and current customers.

Your existing customer base either knows your contact info and what you do, or they know how to find it.  For these people, a basic ad in the yellow pages is sufficient.  The graphical ads in the yellow pages is really for new customers who have never heard of you.  Local internet campaigns are gaining traction and will become commonplace soon.  If your customers are more than local, you have to be found by Google to get new customers (more on that later).

For your existing base, I recommend direct mail…preferably an email newsletter.  If you don’t have email addresses, make a concious effort to get them from everyone going forward.  Until that time, use postcards and newsletters via US mail to mine your existing customer base for more business.

More on building an email list in a future blog…

This entry was posted on July 5, 2007 at 1:06 am and is filed under Marketing, Best Practices, Pearls of Wisdom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

| Print