How to Become A Marketing Genius in 9 Steps

The biggest leap you can make to becoming a Marketing Genius in your business is all in your head – it’s mental – it’s how you approach your business. There are some very simple truths – some of which, maybe all of which you will know – but most business owners are not acting on. Here are those steps and some key tips to act upon them.

Reducing Costs Vs Growing Income: Too many businesses spend too much time and effort trying to save money. Owners working long hours to save a wage / outsource cost or maybe cutting costs to make ends meet. I know keeping your costs down is vital – it is for me, and it is for you. If you really want to start making more money then you need to be spending more time looking at how you can make more income than you do cutting costs. To make 2 times, 10 times or even 100 times as much profit as you are now needs more income. Cutting costs will bring you down maybe 10%, 20% or a bit more but that’s it.

• Top Tip: EVERY day spend a few hours focused on generating more income – I don’t mean looking at spreadsheets of what is possible – I mean coming up with a strategy, a plan and doing it.

Operations Vs Marketing: Two sides of a coin- these two represent 50% of your time in Distribution and 50% of your time is Marketing. Now the truth. Most businesses spend about 90% of their time in operations and only 10% of their time on sales & marketing

• Top Tip: If your not putting in the time and effort you will not get the results

A Cash Flow Focus: To stress this point to the max: If you are not focused on creating cash flow – you are wasting your time in business. Anyone can have a job – and most business owners create just that – a job with more stress. If you want more than that then you need to understand that profit is the difference between cash flow in and cash flow out. Neither is more important than the other – but most of your out flows cannot go away. So you need to focus on inflows.

Spending or Investment? When you are placing the ad or paying the invoice it does seem that marketing is spending – but your marketing business goal must be to turn those spends into investments. If your know £500 spent on a strategy will give you £1000 profit then you are likely to want to repeat that marketing. If you only think or guess that your marketing is working – why bother.

• Top Tip: Test & Measure. I raise this every month in the Mentor Club on the Blog. It is the critical element of ANY business. In fact – there must be business models just in Test & Measure.

Acquisition Cost & Lifetime Value: So how much is a customer worth to you? How much do you currently spend to get a new customer? How much can you afford to spend. If a customer is worth £18,000 profit per a year – how much would you be prepared to spend to aquire them? £18,000? Less? More? Well the only way you will know is to understand what that customer is worth to you for their whole life with your business and any referrals they will generate. You can work it out now- look at all your customers since day dot and how much they have spent with you , how long they stayed, and of course what other business they brought you.

• Top Tip: the reason some businesses spend more for what looks like a low value customer is? Conversion Percentage. Get this up as high as possible – and you will have a key secret to acquisition cost. If you know your life time value and you have a great conversion percentage (test & measure) then you will be able to afford to pay more for your leads

Stop Selling Start Buying: Stop thinking in terms of selling to your prospects and start thinking of buying your future customers – at a price that works for you. This is a big mindset change – your whole business is not about selling to prospects but re-focused on buying their custom. The real question to ask is can you buy your customer for less than their life time profit?

• Top Tip: What can you do to buy your customers? Wine & dine? Critical Non Essentials? Extra work done at no extra cost to them? All of a sudden we now have a measure. So use it and come up with a plan to buy your customers. You may lose out on the first sale but you need to think about life time value

Wallet Share vs Market Share: I’d rather have a bigger share of my existing customer’s wallet – than worry about my market share and all that new business. “Chasing your tail” – is the never spoken name of the often spoken “Grow your market”. Here’s an example – if I run a pizza delivery franchise, do I want to spend my time getting my share of the local take away market – well yes. BUT… what I really want is to get my customers to keep spending money with me more often – not just a rotation through the usual suspect of takeaways. I want them to come to me twice as often as they go to someone else. I want their wallet, once they have bought from me I know where they are – so why keep chasing all the people who may never buy?

• Top Tip: It’s a balance – but take it from me repeat business is marketing expert business.

What Business Are You In? When I ask people this I get the normal answers; Accountant, Fruit & Veg, Car Repairs, Franchise XYZ, etc etc. Very few people get it right- most business owners do not know what business they are in. They are all in the business of… making a PROFIT. Which is all about spending less than your earn So all the stuff above about getting them to spend more, stay with you longer, buy more often, etc is all about

• Top Tip: If you’re now in the profit making business what changes do you need to make?

Promotion Vs Business: Are you in a business or a long running promotion? I once met a shop owner who told me his customers usually only ever bought from him once and so he was always looking for new customers. That is a promotion; one product, one service and once you sold it to someone that’s it – you need to find a new customer. That is my definition of an on-going marketing promotion. In a business you can sell one or many things to them time and time again.

• Top Tip: Short on what you can sell them? Nobody said it has to be your product or service you keep selling them. Strategic Alliances and / or Host Beneficiaries are great ways to get more sales

Regards

Peter