Strategic marketing can help CEOs increase revenue

If you were to Google, “how to increase revenue” one of the first search results outlines four simple methods. Increase number of customers. Increase transaction size. Increase the frequency of transactions per customer. And, perhaps most obviously, increase price.

When looking at the first three options on this list, you’ll notice they’re all to do with your customers. Securing more customers, getting them to spend more money and encouraging them to do so more often.

In today’s experience economy, business leaders must think of customer experience as a competitive advantage, says Julian Ardagh, CEO of Effective Intelligence (EI). “Traditional marketing strategies are not as effective as they used to be. As new technologies alter customer behaviour and up customer expectations, CEOs must remember: your brand is only as strong as the experiences you create for your customers.”

Direct marketing is all about speaking directly to your customers and building relationships with them so that you have the insights to elicit action from consumers,” continues Ardagh.

If you want to provide your customers with a positive experience, you need to know your customer – understand their likes and dislikes, behaviours and preferences. CEOs that run a customer-centric organisation, with a data driven understanding of their customers’ needs, are best equipped to meet these needs, and, in doing so, increase revenue.”

Increasing customers: Generating new leads is all about capturing interest in a product or service for the purpose of upping sales. From a digital marketing perspective, lead generation entails using the right digital channels to target the right people. This is where understanding your customer comes in.

As a CEO, if you’re keen to pique the interest of middle-aged men, living in urban areas you need to know as much about this market demographic as possible. Particularly when it comes to the communication channels they prefer. There’s no point targeting these customers via a well thought out Instagram campaign if this demographic aren’t that likely to be on Instagram in the first place. Business executives must tailor campaigns, brand messaging, channel strategy and offers to speak specifically to the groups of people they’re pursuing.

You can also use your existing customers as a benchmark to target potential customers.

This comes down to strategic market intelligence. If you look into your customer data and discover that your products or services are actually quite popular with middle class women in their 20s, then use these insights to focus your energies on similar prospects.

When CEOs test, optimise and implement their customer acquisition strategy effectively, not only can they grow their customer base quickly, but also better manage their costs.

Upping transaction size: With real time market intelligence you can create different customer personas. This persona, created using an assortment of data, makes it easier to cross-sell and up-sell offerings. Let’s imagine the persona you’ve created has quite the sweet tooth. CEOs looking to maximise revenue will use this insight to offer that specific specials sugary goodies or alert these people when their favourite treats are on special.

Keep them coming back for more: If you don’t know how effective a specific campaign was or how well your latest advertising strategy is doing, there’s no way to tell if you’re on the right track. Strategic CEOs leverage key results and metrics to continuously measure, refine and optimise results, notes Ardagh. In digital marketing, if something isn’t working, you need to change it up.

Ultimately, when you optimise your marketing, brand and advertising budgets, ROI is guaranteed.

– Bizcommunity