Marketing Checkup (Updated for October 2007)

It is that time of year! We are all so busy doing our work that we don’t make the time to do our job of running a business. Part of any good business plan is the scheduling of a year-end marketing update. It is a reality check – where have you been, where are you now, where are you going?

To guide us through this, I talked with Bill McCurry, of McCurry Associates http://www.mccurryassoc.com/. He is the lead-author of Digital Guerrilla Marketing and Guerrilla Managing for the Imaging Industry (and other books published by PMA). Bill is also the author of the new book It’s Your People … Really! Change Your Focus to Grow Your Sales, released at PMA in Orlando. As an author and professional speaker, Bill works with firms to create practical and effective marketing solutions. His techniques use low-cost marketing ideas for finding clients, promoting your imaging products and services successfully.

Piscopo: Creative professionals often ask me about direction, is direction the same as finding your focus? How do you do that and what is the benefit?

McCurry:  What I mean by focus is to look hard at current and past customers and ask, “How do I build a relationship so I will be irreplaceable?” You want your focus to be the building of repeat and referral business. You can’t afford to depend on just looking for new business. It costs so much more to get a new client than to keep one you already have. It is also very expensive (in time/energy/imagination/cash) to get people to change their buying pattern.

Piscopo: You talk in your books about spending money on marketing more effectively, how does that start? 

Bill McCurry:  We often buy marketing because someone has sold to it to us-usually a bad plan. You do not have to throw a lot of money at marketing.  It is not as effective as creating a budget. Most of the really successful businesses I have seen work with a time/energy/imagination/cash budget instead of just dollar budget. It is a plan that budgets time, energy, imagination and some money. Time is the most critical factor – book time on your calendar for marketing – time with you for you.  You should spend 60% of this “budget” on existing customers.  The most effective marketing is selling to existing customer base.

Piscopo: Give us some ideas for a “reality check” for finding and keeping clients.

McCurry:  Here are some specific tips:

• Find out how your customers prefer to be contacted by asking them individually and then make that happen.
• Junk mail and spam is only when you are sending non-targeted materials, make sure you are sending relevant information.
• Email and direct mail can be done on a mass basis. For example, a portrait photographer can use this kind of personalized mass-mailing idea: Send out a print of last’s year’s portrait and ask “Here is Susie last year…what does she look like today?”
• The more difficult you make yourself to be contacted, the less you will be contacted. Give out your phone, fax, and email – if appropriate give a physical address but then you will have to add your “office hours” to this information

 If you want to give a reward for referrals give them something they would never buy. If you sell portraits, don’t give away portraits-use something special, such as an album or a photography calendar. Again, find something they would not usually or normally buy.

 
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