Your Communications Strategy

We are now moving into the realms of proactive marketing, this area involves:-

• Planning your Communications Strategy
  
• Developing your market segmentation model
  
• Email Marketing
• Measuring cost per response
  
• Learning as you go go along

 Planning your Communications Strategy

What are you going to say, to whom and when?

Reassuringly you have already decided this in the development of your website, because you are going to communicate the benefits of each product to the target market for each product, in the order of that which you feel will deliver the most profit.

Developing your market segmentation model

Again you have already done this, when you start the process they are simply the target markets associated with each product.  (See "The Three Growth Phases of a Marketing Database")

Email Marketing

This is a big subject that has its own section, however assuming you have existing email addresses of customers and an idea of which product the emails relate to, then you have the ability to send out email broadcasts, that are relevent to each product to people who have expressed an interest in that product.

Measuring the cost per response

Cost per response is important because, apart from measuring cost effectiveness, each campaign has a life cycle.

It is difficult to generalise here because every market is different, however communication is a process of building trust.

Trust is hard earned and easily lost. So don't try the hard sell, be patient, use emails to drive customers into your website to find out information, meet people, attend events etc. It is a lifestyle approach.

Your initial responses will be low, then build, and finally drop off. The time to start the next campaign to the next target market, is just after the peak.

Keep varying the messages based upon different benefits into different target markets.

Your cost per response will tell you when the campaign has peaked.

Learn as you go along

Marketing is an iterative process, each campaign will teach you something, even those that fail horribly. The trick is to test each campaign to see what works and then do more of those that work well for you.

Next Step

GOTO  "Forums"