When Marketing Know Your Objective (Part 2) - Adult B2B Marketing Tip

When Marketing Know Your Objective - Part 2

Yesterday we talked about knowing your objective in marketing and we discussed a consignment furniture store that ran generic ads that did absolutely nothing for their business. Here's more on that subject:

The problem was, they were missing a step. Instead of assuming everyone was just waiting to hear their ads so they could finally find a place to empty their wallets, the owners needed to assume nobody had ever heard of the store, and that they would need a very low-risk way to find out more about it before they would even invest the time to come check it out. In their store, because it's consignment, the inventory changes all the time, and they never have the same stuff twice. What they have just depends on what people bring in to sell.

So they started using the "Inventory Update List," which is simply a list that's printed out every two weeks of everything that's come in during that time period. Then, on the radio ad, after talking a little about the store, instead of only giving people the option of coming into the store, listeners were given a lower-risk option of calling in or going on line to get put on the "Inventory Update List" the store would e mail to them. The results? First of all walk-in traffic just about doubled, but more significantly, they took over 30 calls a day from people who just wanted to be on the list. Once they got someone on the list, they had the ability to contact them as many times as they wanted to offer incentives to purchase.

The Point Is: sometimes it's appropriate to generate sales from ads, in a lot of cases though, it's smarter to generate leads. You just want to make sure you know exactly what you're trying to accomplish before you start. The owners with the furniture store thought people would come into the store when they heard the radio ads - they were wrong. There was actually an in-between step for many prospects - calling in to be put on the list. Now, they've got the list on the internet with pictures of furniture in stock so customers can go online and get an updated inventory list as often as they like.

More tomorrow.

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