At a recent meeting with some of my most successful clients, I revisited how to implement a new client acquisition marketing plan (sometimes referred to as an NCA).
For starters, most make the rookie mistake of thinking marketing is ONLY about getting new clients. Hopefully, you’ve been hanging around here long enough to understand that’s a grossly simplistic and foolish viewpoint that will cost you.
Because I know you all care a LOT about getting new clients, I decided to revisit the topic here, with you, to ensure you fully understand and appreciate the difficulty of the task and are fully prepared to make good decisions and appropriate investments in time, attention and money to get the results you want.
There are 3 core components to successful new client acquisition marketing.
The first is the MATH. (which I’ll cover in more detail in a moment.)
The second is STRATEGY.
The final is the TACTICAL IMPLEMENTATION.
Your marketing STRATEGY is made up of three subcomponents: Market, Message, and Media. For years I’ve talked about the “4 M’s” together in my stump speech on marketing: Market, Message, Media, and Math. (For More On The “4 M’s” Of Marketing, Click HERE)
Core Component #1: Math
The only reason I’m starting with MATH and separating it from the other three now under “strategy” is that your “Math” pertains to setting goals and working backward to definitive marketing KPIs you need to hit in order to successfully achieve your objectives. And that is where you must START. Once you know the “Math,” then we move on to the STRATEGY.
Core Component #2: Strategy
The first step in any marketing strategy is figuring out and deciding upon a WHO. Who do we want as a customer? Who has unmet needs we can fill? Who has a flexible wallet and budget to spend? Who do we do our best work for? Your “who” then directs what Message your company needs to convey in its advertisements and throughout its communications, from the umbrella “message” of what our USP is and why someone should buy from you, to the individual headlines, copy, and offers you put into your marketing communications. Then, once the WHO is determined and we’ve got a strong, compelling, interesting, and attention-grabbing message, we can move to MEDIA.
Unsuccessful marketing attempts typically START with media without any consideration of the previous component parts. Media is simply the means by which you will communicate (sell) to your market, from the umbrella “media” strategy of selling via infomercial, direct to consumer, via a franchise system, a distributor or direct sales force, and micro media choices such as whether we use direct mail, Google pay-per-click, YouTube videos, SEO, etc.
Core Component #3: Tactical Implementation
You need to have tactical implementation. Implementation of various campaigns, which includes the setup and use of a marketing automation system and CRM and how to correctly execute the campaigns dictated by our STRATEGY (How To Conduct A Good Webinar for example, or How To Construct And Execute On A Direct Mail Campaign Properly, etc.)
All are important and should be considered in the order I’ve just mapped out when making decisions on what to do to get new clients and where to start. As I said, you should START with the MATH.
Marketing “Math” is something that isn’t really taught to small business owners, but it’s the framework of any successful business. Math includes things like your TAM (total addressable market) and SAM/SOM (serviceable available market, serviceable obtainable market), which then determine how much potential there is for your business growth. Marketing math also includes the strategy of “How do we make money around here? What is our allowable cost per customer? Per lead? What do we have to charge and how many customers do we need to hit our goals?” Then, of course, there’s the nitty-gritty day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month, rubber-hits-the-road functional sales and marketing numbers of response rates, conversion, raw and qualified leads, appointments, close rates, average contract value, sales pipeline, etc. MSPs: New Client Acquisition By The Numbers (Part 2) – Dive Into Marketing “Math”
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