For Maximum Profit Growth: Advertise Beyond The Cash Register

Much of the advertising by small to mid-size businesses leaves the real money on the table. Here's how to extend your profit strategy beyond the initial sale.

Most of the retail advertising I see offers "bargain basement" discounts with painfully low profit value to the seller. Sure, there's the expectation that a buyer will make an additional purchase, but as someone very accurately said, "hope is not a strategy"! Using a more proactive conversion strategy will give you far more profitable results.

Formulating longer-range objectives in all of your ad campaigns will, ultimately, lower your overall marketing costs by increasing the profitability of each campaign.

You Know They're Coming, So 'Bake A Cake'
Attracting buyers isn't the same as acquiring a customer, and your marketing strategy has to take this distinction into account. A business that's not converting buyers into customers is just an endless series of promotions!

Why not have your salespeople ready with pre-planned up-sell and cross-sell strategies, as well as bundled offerings to go along with your initially advertised 'specials'? Granting authority to offer discretionary 'one-off' discounts to complete a bundle can add tremendous power to your sales force and turbo charge their effectiveness.

When an ad campaign is well thought out, your product offering gives a lot of clues about what the buyers who respond really want to accomplish. Instead of thinking about the products you're selling, consider what problem your buyers want to solve as a result of the purchase.

Show The Advantages Of Being A Customer
Do you sell to a return trip by offering a 'first time buyer's certificate' that is good for some special offering if redeemed in the next 15 or 30 days? What about a 'bring a friend coupon' that may get an additional buyer your campaign may have either missed or failed to convince.

Your sales staff should have a range of 'bounce-back' options since the same offer isn't going to be attractive to everyone.

Capture Their Personal Data
Do you enroll them in your automatic 'birthday discount shopping spree' program to capture their personal information? You'll need it in the future to involve your new buyer in your relationship marketing efforts. When you can begin to acurately correlate this data, you can begin to develop accurate individual customer profiles.

As time goes by you'll know the buying patterns and preferences that will let you deliver laser focused, offers that generate high volume, high profit responses.

The Takeaway
The deliberate planning of your conversion process will generate higher returns on your advertising investments and ensure a continuously widening customer base. You'll soon see a dramatic upsurge in revenue that you may have otherwise thought impossible!

Kamau Jackson is a Chicago marketing consultant who helps business owners leverage their existing assets to dramatically increase profits without increasing advertising costs. Get more info about online and offline small business marketing strategies at www.internetknowledgesolutions.com.