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Newer & better tactics to increase sales

Thursday, July 6, 2023

Newer, better, & aggressive tactics to increase sales

My colleague and friend Don Roberts recently wrote about marketing suggesting, “Now might be a good time to check in and find out if there is a newer, better way.” Don is right.

And you’re also correct if you recognize that your success is the direct result of customer centricity, intelligent aggressive marketing and differentiation. This is how you grow.

First, let’s dissect your prospects. Retailers have four discrete categories — active shoppers, predictive shoppers, repetitive shoppers and eventual shoppers.

Active shoppers are gold because they’re searching for someone to trust right now. You know who they are because they’re inside your competitor’s stores. To reach them, you execute what’s known as a satellite “Rain Campaign” to beam down and tag their phone while they’re there. After tagging their phone, a Rain Campaign will send them your ads that are shown on their cell phone, home devices and office computers for weeks. Every major retailer in every category is already doing this one tactic. You should be too. Otherwise, you’re not competing; you’re cooperating.

The benefits are obvious. The first is efficiency; advertising only to those who are want to buy something now. The second benefit is immediate results. The third benefit is many of these prospects likely hadn’t been considering your firm. After all, you found them in a competitor’s store. They weren’t lost; they consciously went elsewhere.

The fourth benefit, along with being efficient and effective, is that Rain Campaigns are not expensive. You can target three or more locations for no more than $500/month. Even better, your ROI is measurable. Your dashboard will tell you how many visits to your website and how many people who viewed an ad consequently walk in your door. Yes, this is legal.

The second category is those who are predictive prospects. These are predictive individuals in transition buying a new home. Easy tactic; aim your satellites at homes listed for sale. A very large percentage of retail sales come from families that are moving into a new home. In most markets, this is a much larger share than new construction where you tend to break price to get paid slowly. Even better, 98 percent of homes for sale are listed online. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel.

Repetitive prospects are those who buy flooring often or are influencers. They may be builders, interior designers, property managers, realtors, insurance adjusters, etc. Each of these categories can be important and you want to keep your ads in front of them.

Repetitive prospects are often relationship driven. To be fair, ads rarely disrupt strong relationships. So your objective is to heighten brand awareness and preference; to be the obvious option when their current resource eventually fails them. And you know they will.

You can target repetitive prospects at their offices, studios or homes. You can also target them by industry apps they’ll have on their phones or their industry government category number. Since you likely know who they are, you can also reverse process their phone number to their internet protocol address to advertise directly to them. Again, no fuss, muss or waste to build brand awareness and preference; be top of mind.

The fourth category is eventual prospects. These are individuals who fit your demographic profile and will someday be shopping for a product you sell. Historically, magazines and newspapers delivered this customer to you. Today you reach these clients using technology.

The key is that you know your market and best prospects. You can segment prospects by cars they drive, the value of their home, age, level of wealth, age of children, political party and a thousand other filters.

In my most recent article, I wrote that “when the products you sell are very similar to the products your competitors sell, then everything else has to be different.” The article was about merchandising; marketing is no different.

Shakespeare wrote in The Merry Wives of Windsor, “Why, then, the world's mine oyster, Which I with sword will open.” And for businesses like yours, thanks to marketing technology’s Rain Campaigns, the world is your oyster — and satellites are your sword.

Chris Ramey is president of The Home Trust International. He can be reached at cpr@thehometrust.com.