My email inbox this morning had some familiar messages in it. There are some firms out there that belive that if they say the same thing enough times, I’ll become their customer. They’re wrong.
If I was going to give in to a relentless stream of almost-identical messages, I’d have done it by now.
Years ago, when I was running an international marketing team, I was able to measure the effectiveness of a wide range of marketing campaigns over several countries and over an extended period of time. Here’s what my team and I learned.
For anyone to become a customer, we had to touch them, on average, in six different ways. And we had to touch them with more than three distinct messages. For anyone who’s not a marketing geek, ‘touch’ means the person received some sort of marketing approach from us – an email, a direct mail offer, a website visit, a recommendation from a peer facilitated by us, and so on.
When we examined the statistics, we couldn’t find anyone who had been persuaded by a single touch.
The question for you is, does your marketing plan allow you to touch each of your potential customers enough times, and in a variety of ways?
Are you able to use a variety of communication methods? Are you able to vary your message enough for it to be interesting, catching people’s attention, without fundamentally shifting your value proposition?
Hi Matthew,
Thanks for that and I agree – most of the repeat ‘touch’ email I get are automatically ‘junked’. I do find that having meaningful conversations with people at networking meetings (especially Stockport Breakfast Club of course!), followed by inviting them to linkedIn, often helps to facilitate a 1-2-1 meeting.
Its then up to me (and them) to ensure we have value in that meeting and explore where there are ways to work together. New school meets Old school to some extent, but you can’t beat meeting face to face.
Bye for now,
Jools
Such an important point about the different messages/ways – not just the same “touch” multiple times Matthew – and great to hear your stats/experience of it.
I see the problem most often with people who use networking as a key business development approach. They know that it takes multiple touches to bring someone on as a client – but assume that repeatedly bumping in to them at a netwrokign event and having a pleasant conversation will do this. It won’t. You need to think about how you can broaden and deepen relationships with each “touch”.
Ian