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IN THIS ISSUE:
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FROM THE EDITOR
Demographics Articles: A Popularity Contest
Earlier this year we passed the one-year mark as a co-brand partner
providing demographic tools and articles to Microsoft’s bCentral. To
celebrate, I asked our friends at bCentral which articles had proven
to be the most popular. Now, it’s not quite a fair question—some of
the articles receive more “push” from MSN than others. So the results
I’m about to reveal are not on a level of statistical accuracy
comparable to the rest of our work around here!
With that warning... which of our articles have proven to be the most popular? During the survey period of December 2002 through February 2003, the following articles received the highest hit counts: First place: How to create radio ads that sell, 18,953 hits www.bcentral.com/articles/demographics/123.asp Many radio ads today are loud, obnoxious and not worth the wait between songs or talk show breaks. That said, a significant amount of radio advertising also succeeds for its clients... and yours can too. Second place: There’s gold in that customer information, 18,721 hits www.bcentral.com/articles/demographics/115.asp For most enterprises, there’s a mix of good, better and best customers. Unfortunately, there are bad customers as well, and they can be a time and money drain. Third place: Your Unique Selling Proposition: Use it or lose it, 13,119 hits www.bcentral.com/articles/demographics/116.asp Every day, you're inundated with more than 1,500 advertising messages. If you're like most people, you're spending huge amounts of energy just trying to block out those messages. Now, ask yourself: "How do I get my message across when most people are trying hard to dismiss it?" Now, I never would’ve guessed writing radio ads would be so popular with the bCentral audience. But then again, radio advertising is relatively low in cost and relatively high in its ability to reach a targeted demographic group. So it’s no wonder radio advertising is popular with many small businesses... and no wonder bCentral browsers are curious how to make radio ads more effective.
Resources BCentral Demographics article index www.bcentral.com/articles/demographics/default.asp TOOL BITS
To Grow Your Business, Profile Your Customers
If you subscribe to marketing e-newsletters like I do, you may have noticed an increase in columns urging you to profile your customers. This is not a big new marketing breakthrough, but rather, a “back to basics” movement that offers a means to increase sales in a generally flat economy. The basic principle behind profiling customers is similar to that followed by the notorious bank robber Willie Sutton who, when asked why he robbed banks, replied “because that’s where the money is.” The point of profiling your customers is to find the best ones, because that’s where the money is. How do you go about profiling? First, start with the easy stuff: Demographics. Geographic location is the easiest demographic trait to profile. Simply locate your customers—placing pins on a map works great. At the heart of most customer profiling lies the wisdom that "birds of a feather flock together." If you find where your customers live, you are likely to find prospects you can recruit as customers living there too. It’s a simple matter to buy a mailing list for a specific geographic area, drop your current customers off that list (a process called “de-duping”) and mail an attractive “try us out!” offer to the remaining list. To add more detail to your customer profile, add other demographic traits, like gender, race/ethnicity, approximate age, income bracket, and marital status. You can further refine a prospect mailing list to include just households that match the demographic attributes of your customers. If most who buy your product are married couples, try dropping the single people off your next mailing list and watch your response rate improve. How does your customer profile compare to the general population in your market area? To view a “snapshot”, order a Demographic Profile report from our Market Research Tools and use it for comparison. Want to go to the next level with profiling? Try culling out the customers who have little value to your business over the long term, and focusing your prospecting efforts on those who match your best customers’ characteristics. Who are your best customers? The customers who are best for your business are those who have purchased recently, who purchase frequently, and those who have spent the most money in total. These three keys, sometimes abbreviated “RFM”, add up to a powerful model predicting who will be your best customers in the future. Imagine a “bull’s eye” target: those customers who score high on recency, frequency, and monetary value (RFM) belong in the center ring. Study everything you can about them, then train your sights on targeting new prospects who, because they are birds of a feather with these “bull’s eye” customers, are likely to be “where the money is”. For many businesses, especially local retailers and service businesses, this type of profiling is all that’s required to give sales a boost. But for some, such as consultants who can only serve a small client base, the profiling task needs to take another direction. Take a “SIP” to find your strategic customers. “SIP” is an acronym that stands for “Significant, Important, Profitable”. Customers who fit your “SIP” profile are not only good for business; they are strategic partners in your business’ success. To understand “SIP”, call to mind a customer you consider essential to your business.
Whether you focus simply on demographic profiling, move deeper into “RFM”, or choose the “SIP” route, do one thing: do something! Profiling your current customers cannot help but give you new insights into your business...and how to quickly move toward higher and more profitable sales. Resources “There’s gold in that customer information,” http://www.bcentral.com/articles/demographics/115.asp “Moving toward CRM: Are you ready?” www.bcentral.com/articles/demographics/129.asp | |  | |
SURVEY RESULTS
What’s Your Web Site Up To?
My thanks to everyone who responded to last month’s Web Site Survey.
I asked about the importance and functions of your Web sites, and
your responses confirm that a Web site has become a key business
tool, no matter the size of a business.
Your responses indicate: A whopping 91% of respondents’ businesses have a Web site. How often is that site updated? For 18%, the answer is daily. Another 36% fall at the other end of the spectrum, changing content just a few times a year. And for over 27%, the content is changed several times a month. Very few of you rely on set schedules such as weekly or monthly updates, leaving me to conclude that changes in your business, not changes on the calendar, drive your Web sites’ content. As to who’s making those content changes, respondents are evenly split between using on-staff expertise and hiring outside services. Attentive readers will recall that in last month’s Bulletin I subdivided Web site functions into brochures, landing pages, and online stores (either stand-alone or as part of an online provider of e-commerce.) Just over 55% of respondents consider their sites to be online brochures. A pinch over 16% indicated “landing page” functions and the same for online stores. About a quarter of respondents checked “other functions.” (I wonder what?) To promote these websites, what are respondents doing? Including the address in your other communications, for one thing. You’re also promoting your site to search engines, advertising on other Web sites, publishing e-newsletters, trying bulk e-mail, and managing your own opt-in e-mail prospect lists. More than half of the responses came from existing businesses, employing fewer than 25 employees, with annual sales of less than $250 thousand. Tell a Friend
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About Third Wave Research
The BULLETIN is published occasionally by Madison, Wisconsin-based Third Wave Research.
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