Who you get your message in front of is the most important aspect of your marketing. If you have a great offer but target people who are not a good fit, then the chances of them responding are slim. This leads to poor response rates and wasted marketing resources. But, when you get your message in front of the best prospects, magic happens. Response rates increase, and you’ll see a higher return on investment. The question is how do you know if you are marketing to the right people?
Build a Customer Model
Before you select new prospects, you need to start by looking at your current customers. These are the people your marketing and sales teams have won over. They are the ones who believe in what you have to offer and make purchases. Your goal is to understand who they are, so you can find others like them.
The best way to do this is by creating a customer model. This will examine all of your consumer data and highlight important information about who your customers are. It will cover everything from basic demographics about your customers to lifestyle and behavioral data to geographical information. All of this data shows you a well-rounded view of who your consumers are and where they are coming from. It creates an ideal customer profile, establishing a standard for who you want to target.
Score Your Marketing List
Next, it’s time to see how well your prospect list stacks up to your ideal customer profile. This is a process called scoring where you run your prospect list through the customer model. Each record is scored and ranked. If your prospect list scores high, then you have been targeting people who are similar to your current customer base. If your prospect list scores low, then you have been advertising to less than ideal candidates. You can correct this by using your customer model to pull high quality prospects for future campaigns.
Analyze Responses
When it comes to marketing, everything is always evolving. This true of your customer base as well. Part of making sure you are marketing to the right people is analyzing your campaign responses. After each campaign, set aside time to examine your response data. Look at who you targeted and who responded. Do your responders line up with your ideal customer profile? If not, how are they different? What can you learn from your findings? Take that information and feed it back into your customer model. This will help you hone in on finding even better prospects.
Study Geography
Targeted marketing areas can be massive, spanning entire regions of the country or laser focused on a small radius around your store. Regardless of size, there are bound to be differences within your marketing area. Map out where your responses came from. What do you see?
Do you have entire neighborhoods that yielded zero responses? Did the majority of your responses come from 60% of your area? Remove non-responsive zones from your list and reduce marketing waste. Next, take what you’ve learned about your high performing zones and use it to find similar neighborhoods for you to target.
Before you launch into a new campaign, study what’s currently working for your business. Who are your best customers? Strategize ways for how can you find more people like them. This will give you a strong guide for knowing how to move forward and create successful marketing campaigns.
Not sure where to start? Reach out and let us know what you’re struggling with. We will be happy to help you find the right solution for your business.