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NexTree

How to Stop Your Database Marketing From Failing

Are you happy with your email open rates and click-through rates? Are you happy with you post engagement levels? Do you have a “marketing database”?

Chances are you are sending regular emails to your database of contacts, prospects and customers.  You’ve probably got a presence on LinkedIn and posting on Facebook and Instagram and possibly Twitter. You’re probably not using YouTube very much, if at all.

You may have in-house employees doing your database marketing or if you own a smaller business doing it yourself. Are you using a 3rd party agency?  All of these require a significant investment of time and money.

Are you happy with the ROI on your database marketing? Should it be better?

Want to know one thing you can do to increase your ROI?  Well keep reading.

5 Types of Contacts

Your database marketing, social media and your website are all aimed at 5 different types of contacts who are or may be interested in promoting or buying your products and services. Some of them have engage with your social media, phoned or even visited your office. Hopefully you have built your relationship with many to the extent where you have their permission to send them marketing communications.

Who are these mysterious 5 types? Well, they are…

  1. Your customers
  2. Your prospects
  3. Your leads
  4. Your business’ community
  5. Your Social Media “Liker”

You are possibly thinking “Wow! I never knew that…Not!”  I agree with you that this is what might be termed “stating the obvious”.

However, this is one area where your marketing, particularly your database marketing and social media marketing, may be failing. Why?

Not All People Are The Same

Each of these 5 contact types are really very different from each other because their relationship with you and your business is very different. The level of their knowledge, understanding of you and your business and what they want from you is very different.

  1. The customer has a relationship with you and your staff and most likely likes your products and services.  They may buy again or be happy to refer others to you or recommend you. They want you to show them you care about them and you value their business.  They are likely to be interested how you can help them solve other problems and add more value. The Customer is one of the most likely to engage with you through several of your different marketing activities e.g. emails and social media.
  2. The Prospect is a qualified lead. Chances are they have done a lot of online research. They have checked your website, social media including looked at the LinkedIn profiles of you and your team. They’ve made contact and wanting you to show you are a credible business, how you provide better value when you solve their problem (price is only part of the value component). They want to know you and your team are experts in what you offer, that you understand them and their problems and have solved them before. They want you to show you care about them but a reluctant to enter your database in case they get swamped with product and “buy this”  communications.  The younger people also know about retarget marketing.
  3. The Lead is an unqualified potential buyer who has expressed some interest in your products and services. You have yet to find out if you are good fit for each other. Their actions have put them into your “sales funnel”. They possibly want information they have been unable to find during their online search (well done on your marketing…you’ve made them reach out).They are likely to be very wary of subscribing to any regular communications. They may also be easily scared away if you go “too hard, too fast”. They don’t like pushy salespeople. They want you to show value and see you, your business and your team are experts and an authority in your field. They want to know your unique benefits (not features) so they see why you are different from your competition.
  4. The Business Community are the businesses which are located in your market and operations areas and interact with you and other businesses. They may be part of the industry category or sector as your business. They may be your suppliers. Your business community also include the people who live in the area you are located and/or trade in. They may or may not be a customer, but they can influence what people hear about you and your business.  This is especially true if they are on social media. Your communication with the other businesses may need to reflect your involvement in their community. This may mean be part of local industry or business groups or involvement with the local community. The people in the community where your business is located want to hear how you can help them, or groups of people or their locale. They want information about sponsorships or help given to people or businesses.  They may be interested in achievements by you, your team or your business overall. They very likely don’t want to receive “buy this” communications.
  5. The Social Media “Liker” is a complex person.  They may or may not be a customer, prospect, or lead and you need to establish that relationship as a soon as possible. Let’s assume they are not a customer, prospect or lead. Also assume they have not “Liked” you or your business page just to access your list of “likers” or “followers or “connections”. How you engage with your social media “likers” is a strategy in its own right. The reason for a separate strategy is because how you interact with them will vary between social media channels.  Some may be there because they really like what you do and provide online influence by sharing posts or making comments. Others are they because they like you are a person and believe in you. The information “Likers” are looking for also depends on the social media channel.  For example, on Facebook they may be interested in you as a person. Whereas on LinkedIn the same person wants to see your professional side and perhaps understand how credible an authority you or your business is. Social media gives you the opportunity to interact with them personally.  Where appropriate encourage them to subscribe to your “direct contact community”.However, caution should be used when using automated messaging bots which many people feel are very much like SPAM emails. These are relatively new marketing tools and automated communications may be less accepted.

Not All “Contacts” Are the Same

When you talk to a large audience your subject matter needs to be more general nature. Therefore, it relates to only a portion of the audience.  Many of the audience are possibly distracted and not engaged with your communication.

We suggest you develop buyer personas or customer profiles to create segments in your database.  For more information visit our page on customer segmentation.

Use Targeted Communication

You can attract the audience more precisely though the use of targeted marketing. This will enable viewers to see the post or video is more relevant to them. This will result with a better engagement with them and you will be more likely to achieve the campaign objectives.

The same principle of creating marketing which better relates to your various market segments will lift the engagement and response rates.

While it may take some time to review and segment your different audiences the benefits can be startling.

An Example

For example, one business we assisted identified clients lived in 215 postcodes.  Yet more than 80% of their business came from only 30 postcodes. Combining this with buyer personas we assisted them to identify enabled them to be more targeted in their online and offline marketing.

This focus in marketing has resulted in more priority given marketing methods and media which is bring better results

How to Get Started

Hopefully this post has help you find ways to make sure your database marketing is a success.

We have some proven ideas on how marketing and sales can be improved by creating buyer personas and database segmentation to help you achieve better results for your business. We would be delighted to share them with you.

Click here to arrange free chat with Ross Keating, The Client Orchardist at a time convenient to you.

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