Common Sense Insights to Improve Your Sales and Marketing Results

Today's post is by one of most in-demand speakers, Ford Saeks.  Our client's love working with Ford because he absolutely understands what actionable tools are relevant to franchisee audiences and how to deliver those tools in an engaging and exciting way. Ford also works with franchisor organizations and today's post is all about revisiting a common sense approach to marketing.  

 Common Sense Insights to Improve Your Sales and Marketing Results

By Ford Saeks

It’s funny, I've worked with many franchise companies throughout the years and while many think that they need new ideas to get more customers and increase sales, what many really need to do is to act on the ideas and systems they already have.

Are there really any secrets to successful marketing, or does it all just boil down to plain old common sense? Now, I realize that many things related to marketing and business growth that seem like common sense to me often appear as “amazing secrets” when I’ve revealed them to others. But, no matter your level of expertise, the important consideration for you is to see if you recognize them in your own marketing efforts. And, if you don’t, it’s time to start applying them. Here are three quick reminders for your business growth success.  

1. Test, Measure and Optimize to “move the needles” 

Regardless of your type of business or industry, you have to establish your Key Performance Indicators (KPI’S) as a baseline and work to improve your numbers, or “move the needles”…  Testing your messages is a large part of successful marketing. When you send out multiple versions of a promotion with different headlines, you’ll be able to find out which headline pulls a better response. Once you have a “winner,” use that one as your control and continue to test against it in the future. The key is to keep optimizing your marketing messages and offers to produce even greater results. Of course, this does means that you have to track and measure the responses of your marketing efforts so you know what’s working and what’s not!

2. Creating Compelling Unique Selling Propositions (USPs)   

To capture market share in this highly competitive and fast changing world, you know how important it is to distinguish your products and services from your competitors. When was the last time you really looked at your marketing messages to ensure they were compelling and targeted to the influencer and the decision maker?  

3. Ethical Bribes to Increase Leads  

An ethical bribe is just a free give-away of something in exchange for the prospects contact information. It can be as simple as a special report, white paper, audio or video, or combination of such, as long as it is value-added and addresses a want or need from your prospect.   These work on websites, product landing pages, lead pages, and throughout social media too. I know that many Franchisees shutter when social media is mentioned because it can be a huge time waster when not managed properly, but social media can be a fantastic way to listen to the pulse of the marketplace, know what you’re customers are saying about your brand, and help you stay top-of-mind in your customers mind.  By offering your free report, or 7 tips…, 3 keys…. 5 ways… 10 steps…, you are building trust and credibility, which helps convert a prospect into a qualified prospect and new customer.

Common sense or marketing secrets…you decide! But, no matter how you look at them, these strategies will help your franchise system get more business and make more money.

 As mentioned, we get remarkable feedback from our client's on the value of Ford's session.  In fact, here's a recent client comment about Ford: 

“Not only were Ford's session's filled to the back of the room,  he did his homework and really understood our brand and our franchisees challenges in running their businesses day to day.  We especially appreciated that Ford was willing to do whatever it took to do a great job and really connect with our franchisees.  We will definitely be using Ford again in the near future!” 

Ford delivers customized keynotes, breakouts and workshops on local area marketing, social media, business growth, and generational marketing and consistently earns rave reviews.   We'd love to connect with you to see how Ford might be a fit for your next franchise event. 

More soon…

Katrina

P.S. Check out this recent video testimonial given by Dave Kenyon from Gold's Gym after attending one of Ford's dynamic speaking sessions!