In these challenging times, as the customer pool shrinks and budgets tighten, companies must fine tune their marketing efforts. Here are tips on refining your marketing approach to maximise effectiveness and minimise costs.

Interview your salespeople to identify which marketing tools have been most instrumental in successfully selling your products or services. Determine which marketing program has the biggest role in snaring recent sales and allocate your marketing budget toward those programs. Then take these steps.

Increase direct marketing
Increase your use of email and postal mail to deliver targeted offers to your most desirable prospects. Postal mail may get through when your email gets blocked as spam. Rather than doing one time postal mailings to rented lists, improve your results by sending repeat mailings targeted at known prospects (such as your own prospect database). These are economical ways to reach your prospects directly and generate a quick response.

Negotiate discounts on trade publication advertising
In these difficult times, you will likely be better off with a high frequency or high impact presence in one or two key publications than with an occasional presence in several. When the economy is soft, trade publication advertising sales are often weak. This allows you to negotiate an attractive rate with publishers

Use trade shows smartly
Trade shows can be expensive, so consider eliminating those that haven’t previously shown a favourable ROI. Instead, concentrate your investments in those shows and conferences which have proven effective in generating leads and driving sales. Send post-show mailings and use telemarketing follow-up to convert casual inquiries into qualified leads.

Enhance your website
A few cost-effective changes can turn your website into a sales lead generation machine. Select and use keywords carefully so your site appears in the search results for your intended audience. Post keyword rich articles and case studies on your site. To turn visitors into leads, place offers or calls to action on every page of your website. Back up your claims with proof, including certifications, awards and customer testimonials.

Put marketing collateral online
Research shows that many requesters still want printed materials to share with their bosses, colleagues or clients. Many will also be happy and instantly gratified to be directed to your website or sent PDF files. You can also save on printed literature production costs by avoiding expensive metallic inks, or by taking advantage of the efficiencies of digital printing. You can also make items in smaller sizes or print two-sided materials to reduce printing, paper and shipping costs.

Use newsletters
Newsletters are another great way to provide customer value and keep your company’s name top of mind without spending a fortune. Consider using your newsletter to help you identify and qualify prospects. That is, make newsletter subscription involve filling out a brief survey which asks questions about people’s level of interest in your products, buying authority and purchasing horizon. This information can go into your database for immediate or future follow-up, as appropriate, by marketing or sales. Be sure to also publish your newsletter on your website.

Find a marketing partner
Stretch your marketing dollars by teaming up with a company whose products or services complement yours. By pooling your resources, you and your partner can get far more mileage from your respective investments than either of you could alone. For example, consider jointly sponsoring a mailing to promote products and services of both partners to their mutual universe of prospects. Not only do you split the costs, but you also gain access to additional prospects.

Create a referral program
Leverage the power of your existing customers by creating a referral program that rewards customers for sending prospects to your company. Getting referrals from happy long-term customers may be as easy as simply asking for it. Additional incentives, although worth considering, may not be required.

A great little gem I found a few days ago...

I don't know about you, but the whole idea of consulting a website (or book) with the word DUMMIES  in big yellow letters really doesn't appeal to me. As a matter of fact, it's a complete turn off and for a long time I couldn't warm up to the idea of consulting such a place for any sort of instruction.

Then I received a DUMMIES.com newsletter from a colleague forwarded to my inbox. It contaned a few links I found interesting enough to click on. And, it turned out, the information at the other end was informative, useful and easy to follow. Who knew? So now, although I don't love it, I don't mind the big yellow banner screaming 'Dummies' on my desktop.

The site is chock full of categories and related materials. Here is a small sample of a few I found useful on blogging.

click here to find out...

Very clever indeed...

Office Pod UK

There are limits to Twitter homepage modification - changing the background colour or image, and colour of links is really all you can do. So it’s not surprising that more creative homepages come from the designers who have the tools and skills to make it all a little more interesting.

Step 1

Create a Twitter account.

Step 2

Decide on image.

NOTE:

The centre screen belongs to Twitter so the image is limited to give Twitter a stage.

Larger images reduce the necessity for tiling an image. It gives the appearance of one large background . Try starting with an image as large as 1600 x 1200.

All screen resolutions are different. The smaller the screen resolution, the lower the likelihood that the image will repeat itself. For example, if you elect to use an image that has a flower located to the extreme left of the screen, on a lower resolution screen (800 x 600) the flower will display once. On a higher res screen (2048 x 1536) the flower will display as a tiled image.

Step 3

Upload image to Twitter by Clicking “Design” found under “Settings” then click “change background image.”

With all the talk about Twitter and the potential for social networking, free PR and endless potential for businesses over the past few days, I couldn't help but explore the topic a bit more myself. 

I guess I could relate to the guy in this video 'trouble with twitters' who is a little confused as to why someone would 'Tweet' their day away. And why I would think that someone 'Tweeting' things like 'washing the dog now!' or 'hanging with my friends!' would be of interest to me, or anyone for that matter. 

Then, a friend forwarded a link to a list of Twitter pages chock full of material on topics that I'm interested in, published by some of the biggest names in the design business. And I read this article reinforcing what I was beginning to suspect – social networking sites are the tools of a future toolbox that isn't really in the future anymore.

I found myself signing up for my very own Twitter page trying to think of clever and informative things to ‘Tweet’ about.

Still in the early stages – a Twitter newbie – I have a lot to learn, explore and figure out. But I've taken the first step and I'm feeling a bit more confident, informed and a lot less left out. Step-by-baby-step I’m actually starting to get it. I do, however, remain a bit sceptical that I will have enough time in my day to track every social networking site that my friends, family and co-workers are pushing whilst keeping up with my work load and a 'real life'.

But, I can now track the world, business, news, design, friends, family – whatever interests me. I can freely exchange my own thoughts and information with others from my desk with the click of a mouse all in real time – if I feel like it.

I guess it's not just about what the guy at the next desk is doing every 30 seconds, but I can track that too – if I like.