What if I told you that most of your advertising is a waste of money?!
A living marketing tool helps you make sure you’re spending correctly and only in the right areas. It’s the difference between a predictable and effective marketing plan that helps you stay busy all year long…and one that doesn’t.
If you’re an automotive repair shop on RPM ToolKit™, you’ve got this kind of tool already. But if you’re not, here’s how to get started…
First, you need to track sales by source. Your POS software should be able to break this down for you if you’ve been diligent about tracking every ad you place and every piece you send. This doesn’t just mean external sources either…it should include all of the costs involved in maintaining your affiliations and credentials as well as your cost to market to your internal customer database (through newsletters, cards, bounce-back coupons, and more).
Next, track your referrals by customer, making sure to track the referring customer back to the original source so you understand which coupons lead to customers who refer.
Then you need to track the true cost of each source, including the amounts of discounts and giveaways. This means tracking the cost to design, the cost to print, the cost to mail and the cost of the discount.
Once you’ve got it broken down by category for each month, you’ll have a true picture of how much you’re spending on marketing dollars as a percentage of sales. Why is that important? If you’re not spending 6-10% of sales, you’ll never get the growth you want!
These days, if you’re not spending at LEAST 6-8% of sales on marketing, you’re probably not even holding steady, much less growing!
Now, as you break down your spending by month and get an accurate picture of how much you’re spending as a percentage of sales and where you’re spending it, consider this…
On average, it takes 4-6 weeks to see the FIRST results from marketing. The marketing you do today won’t see the biggest impact until almost May!
In other words, you can’t wait to until June to start advertising if you want customers in June!
The same goes for your slow months…if you wait until business is already dead to start advertising, you still have six more weeks of no business to survive before an influx of customers!
If you want to make this your best year ever, you need a living marketing plan, and you need to stick to it. I don’t know about you, but I enjoy fishing a LOT more when I know the fish are biting!
(We’d like to help you create a living marketing tool for your business. We help all of our clients create one! Give us a call today at 866-520-3030 or fill out our contact form and make this summer your best ever, and next winter, your warmest!)
