Why You Don’t Need To Advertise to Get New Customers

Generally speaking, advertising is one of the least effective ways to grow your business. Surprised? MBA’s graduates, ad newspaper reps and the like will never understand this unless they spent their own hard earned cash on advertising, which of course they never have.

So if you shouldn’t advertise, how can you generate customers or sales?

There is seldom any MAGIC BULLET in marketing, rather it’s a series of many automated systems that come together to produce a steady stream of customers. There you have it there’s the secret right there. Just don’t go throwing your money around and hoping for the best.

You should be using a combination of up to at least ten other marketing strategies and you must test and measure each one, continuously.

Wrong Question – Wrong Mind set

A marketing expert in New York back in the 1960’s (I can’t remember his name) who set up marketing systems for doctors and chiropractors said he always got asked the same question everywhere he went.

He would set up marketing systems for each practice and would aim to get 72 patients before moving on to a new client. He worked out that any new practice needed 72 patients to be viable.

The question he always got asked was “What is the single best thing you do that generates most of those 72 patients”. His reply was “I don’t know of any one thing I do that brings in 72 customers. I do however know of 72 things I can do, and I will do, to bring in one customer…..and i do all 72 of them”

This is brilliant advice. In other words, you should be using a combination of at least ten other marketing strategies. It might take a bit of work at first but there’s no other way around it. Implement these 12 strategies below into your business, sit back and watch the sales come in.

Here are the top 12 marketing strategies that you should use in conjunction with each other:

1. Direct Mail – The most effective strategy when done properly. Most people get it wrong or give up after one letter.
2. Well Organised Website - With a clear objective, tone and feel.
3. Email Marketing – To your own list. Becoming more and more difficult.
4. Telephone Marketing – Only when following up on leads generated by other marketing strategies. NOT cold calling!
5. Automated Voice Broadcasting – Eliminates cold calling, staffing problems, maintains customer relationships,  slashes costs and boosts profits.
6. Press Releases - Why spend money on advertising when PR gives you coverage for free?
7. Affiliate Programs - Get others to sell for you by offering an overly generous commission.
8. Auto-Responders - Not the auto reply ‘thank you’ message but a series of sequenced messages sent to your list over 6-12 months or longer to build and maintain trust.
9. Free Reports/Guides – that offer valuable advice and help people solve problems.
10. Magazine/Newspaper Articles – One of the best forms of advertising…. and it’s free!
11. Google Pay Per Click, PPC - Unlike most other forms of advertising, PPC is highly targeted and highly effective. Unfortunately most PPC advertisers don’t know how to write good ads, and they waste their leads with a poorly arranged website which doesn’t convert clicks into leads and therefore customers.
12. Sell to Your Existing Customers - The single most underused resource in any company.

There are many other things you can test such as banner ads, postcards, video etc. Get multiple marketing channels delivering quality traffic to your website, keep selling to your existing customers and your success is virtually guaranteed.

To your success
Jimmy Crangle

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