Okay, maybe this isn't actually about YOU. (Or maybe it is. We'll see in a moment.)
Business owners love to complain about how poorly their marking is working. In a networking meeting, not too long ago, one local dentist got up and told the group how he'd been wasting money for several year on yellow pages and radio ads.
But, he went on, it was just part of the cost of doing business. And then the discussion turned to that famous, but ridiculous admission that most businesses in the room were sure that some of their marketing dollars were working, but they weren't sure which ones.
Does this sound familiar? Are you suffering from the same mistaken impression that it's not possible to know which parts of your marketing dollars are being spent well?
Sure, at some point in history, it was probably hard to track things like which ads people responding to. But even back in the 1980s, we started to see tracking codes, designated toll free numbers, and other methods of tracking which ads we're bringing the customers in, And which were not.
And with the advent of the internet, it's become even easier to track this kind of stuff. It's become a lot quicker too.
And yet, huge numbers of small businesses out there are still not taking advantage of this opportunity. In fact, they're not working in their own self interest, but against it.
Here's a quick example: a couple of weeks ago, a postcard landed in my mail slot. It was a generic ad for a local house cleaning service. There was no special offer, no coupon, No tracking code, nothing. It simply said something like “get your house cleaned by people who care,” and offered a local phone number.
Curious to see if this was a specially coded phone number, which, if I called it, would tell them that a lead had been prompted by the postcard, I looked the company up online. It turned out that the phone number was their man number. Then, because I was still curious, I called them. After a lovely chat with the person at the other end, the call ended, without an attempt from them to ask either where I heard about them nor any effort to close the deal and schedule a visit to my home.
This is not an uncommon occurrence.
But what do you think might happen…
…if more businesses took the time to recognize these type of shortcomings in their marketing and lead generation process? Do you think they'd start making better decisions about where to spend their money?
For many businesses, especially those servicing consumers… Facebook is a great solution to this problem.
Why? Because Facebook gives you the tools to set up and track everything, at a much lower cost than just about any offline (and many other online) lead generation solutions out there. Want to know how Facebook could impact the way you invest your marketing dollars? Download a copy of my free guide to 5 Ways to Find Customers on Facebook.
Just plug in the things you learn, and you'll be on the path to saving money, decreasing your costperlead, and complaining a lot less about your marketing.