Luxury Experience - Marketing Basic Training for 2014

Breakout the fatigues, get ready for the early morning bugle call as we get back to the basics in 2014 with some key marketing initiatives. Time to review the fundamentals of marketing, time to exercise self-discipline, get ready to deal with the rigors of schedules and the marketing daily grind. If this sounds like an advertisement for marketing combat training, and so it should, as marketing is a battle to gain customer visibility and to connect with them.

With all of the "other" tactics that have garnered visibility, money, time, and more money and time in the marketing budget, we tend to overlook the tried and the true basics such as email marketing. Email marketing is still the single biggest channel for driving a conversion for small and large businesses. The names and email addresses in your contact lists are gold nuggets that need to be polished and appraised every so often as they will continue to be one of your most valuable assets.

While we are discussing you email list, take time to update the information and clean up the bounced addresses [no longer a valid email address], remove any duplicates, and start to focus in on addresses that are clean. There are services that you can contract to provide the clean up service, but if you are using a formal email management tool (ex. CoolerEmail, Constant Contact, and etc.) they have built in tools that target bounced email address and tools that log where the email box is full. So, why not use the tools you have under your control before venturing out to expend money?

If you have a mature list of names that you have been communicating and converting sales with, then it may be time to segment your list into groups by likes, needs, etc., which will allow you to target your message to those specific needs and interests. It is more beneficial to do some "target" shooting with a specific target versus using the scatter gun method and hoping to get lucky and hit something. We know by now that it is not the number of emails sent that is of value, but it is the number of emails that connect.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T (sing it Aretha Franklin) - show some respect and treat the people who entrusted you with their contact information like close friends. Do not blast your lists with multiple emails in a short period of time, or worst just send any email communications that may not be closely relevant to a customer's interest. Use the segmented lists you have created and send out relevant and fresh content that matches needs and interests.

Channel surfing is not just for televisions as it is just as prevalent on the Internet, so make sure you are cross-pollinating your content across channels. Draw attention to different social media avenues where your materials have visibility, and make sure you create a reason for them to keep an interest and more so, to return.

Use email to connect and then play-through using social media channels, this will let customers share ideas, thoughts, and opinions, which will allow you to connect on a one-to-one basis. If you have a dedicated team to work your social channels, you can almost obtain a real-time level with your customers. Social channels allows you to listen to what people are saying, it opens up doors to communications, and the ability to engage a customer that can be worth its weight in gold, and remember to thank them for their time, input, and loyalty.

Keeping you content fresh not only keeps you in a forward position with your customers, but it also feeds the major search engines with new materials and links to catalog, which in turn creates new search results to connect to customers; the Internet food chain lives on.

Lastly, keep an eye on how your customer is engaging your content so that you know when to make that strategic decision to move to mobile, or establish a website that is responsive to every device; make a logical next step not a reactionary step. We know that the mobile device movement is gaining momentum, so know your customer and target channels that add value not just add to a list.

To close out our boot camp discussion, we need to remember that there is still the hand-to-hand communications that works and has been working for a long time. Customer loyalty and lasting connections come from familiarization, so create that connection and engage with a customer today.

If you would like to learn more about our services, please visit Luxury Experience Company (www.L-E-Company.com) to see how we can make a marketing difference for your company.