Marketing With The Blindfold Off

Writen by Steve Mills

Marketing is the 'lifeblood' of all successful businesses and ineffective marketing costs British Businesses millions of pounds every year.

Below are forty questions to help you to become more effective in your marketing.

1. Do you have a specific marketing budget, with specific targets?

2. Do you know how many enquiries come into your business each month?

3. Do you know specifically where these leads are coming from?

4. Do you know what percentage of these leads you manage to convert?

5. Do you know how much it costs you to win a new customer?

6. Do you know how much on average a customer is worth to you once you get them on board?

7. Do you employ strategies to get your current customers to buy from you more often?

8. Do you employ strategies to get your current customers to buy more from you each and every time they purchase from you?

9. Do you test the different aspects of your advertising in order to increase your response rates?

10. Have you tried pay per click advertising as part of your on-line marketing?

11. Have you tested the different elements of your direct mail campaigns in order to increase the number of enquiries you receive?

12. Do you win editorial in your local newspaper on a regular basis?

13. Are you and your team trained in the latest sales techniques in order ensure you close the maximum amount of sales from your marketing budget?

14. Is your pricing strategy correct, or could altering your price increase your income generation

15. Do you ever mystery shop your competitors?

16. When was the last time you looked at your corporate brand?

17. Have you used 'blogging' to increase hits on your website?

18. Do you use e-mail marketing on a regular basis?

19. Do you have at least six systems for winning business from referral?

20. Do you have a written sales & marketing strategy?

21. Have you tested using a telesales company and if so how well did it go?

22. Do you consistently will business from your website, or it is just another cost?

23. Do you have at least ten online systems for marketing your website and winning sales?

24. Do you have a newsletter?

25. Do your business cards clearly explain what you do?

26. Do you attend networking events on a regular basis?

27. Do you win business by attending these events?

28. Do you contact your customers to ask them for letters of testimonial?

29. Do you use your letters of testimonial in the marketing?

30. Do you have any strategic partnerships with other businesses who serve a similar market to yourself?

31. Do you go back to your past customers, and people who enquire about your services on a regular basis?

32. When someone enquires about what you do, do you have a system to get their details, contact them to follow up?

33. Have you tested the use of pictures within your marketing?

34. On a scale of 1 to 10 how good would you rate your current marketing to be?

35. Does your website gather the names of the people who visit in order to build your database of contacts?

36. How effective are you at cross selling your product or services to your current customers?

37. When was the last time you benchmarked your business against your competition?

38. Have you ever considered externalising your marketing to a company who have years of experience in making significant income for our clients?

39. Have you trained yourself in marketing?

40. Are you going you do anything as a result of reading this list and realising that you are no even starting to optimise your true marketing potential? If so contact Steve Mills on 0208 788 7489, or e-mail him at steve@max-marketing.co.uk