Spray and pray marketing: the problems and the solutions

When a few long term clients begin to “evaluate” their current contracts, it is easy to feel a sense of anxiety.  Perhaps your motivation and confidence is starting to wane as one after another potential lead dries up.

When business is good, you are king of the hill.  But when business gest tough, it is easy to start panicking.

And when this panic starts to filter in to your marketing, the lack of business leads only gets worse.

Why?  Because the 2 biggest mistakes you can make when business gets tough is to reduce your prices and to widen your market.

I’ll come back to reducing prices at another time, but let’s deal with the widening of your market first.  I suppose it kinda makes sense to feel you must widen your market if your business leads are drying up.  After all, you want more clients.

But never get confused with wanting new clients with wanting to have any-new-client-who-will-have-you.

When you start to widen your market, it is easy to lose your focus, your speciality and your ability to compete with other businesses.

The more niche you are and the more focused your marketing is, the more successful you will be in winning more clients and customers.  And if there is one thing that you are more likely to win over other cheaper competitors is by being a specialist.

When you try to win any-new-client-who-will-have-you, your marketing starts to become spray and pray.  The more letters, emails, calls and tweets you can get out, the more chance you feel someone will come back to you.  Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case.

Here are some of the problems caused by spray and pray marketing.

Sending everyone to the same website

Problem – the attention span of your average website visitor is less than 3 seconds.  People are not as patient online and scan web pages, rather than read them. If they can’t see the right information for them, they hit the back button.  And if you are sending everyone, online and offline, to the same home page, are you giving that potential new client the right information to make a decision on whether to buy from you?

How do you know if you have this problem? – check your web stats and look at your bounce rate.  This will show you how many people click away from your site after viewing only one page.  Also keep track of your conversion rates.  If you sell products and services online, how many visitors do you need to attract to your website to make one sale?

Solution – Having a separate website for each of your target clients is ideal, but not always practical.  Start off by having separate pages relevant for different clients and give out a dedicated web address to the right clients. For example a training business could have www.yourwebsite.com/retail if they have decided to target this sector.  When a potential retail client clicks through to this page, they can read about the problems retail businesses have, what specific solutions are on offer to them and what targeted results can be achieved.  There is a greater chance that this training company is going to be perceived to be a specialist in the retail sector, thus improve their chances of winning business.

Sending everyone the same letter & brochure

Problem – 1,000 letters and brochures are sent out to a mailing list which results in not one enquiry.  Expensive!

How do you know you’ve got this problem? – When the invoices for the printing and postage start hurting your bottom line.

Solution – Break down your database in to smaller lists, for example by industry sector, location or common problem.  Spend time modifying your letter so it is written specifically to that person.  The aim is to have each person read that letter feeling that it is written personally for them.  It focuses exactly on a problem they may have and gives them a clear call to action that is desirable enough for them to act on.  Save your printing costs and do away with the brochure, unless of course you have the budget to design a specific brochure to every target client.  And keep the mailing small enough so that you (or someone in your team) can follow up each and every letter by phone.  Follow up is key!

Sending everyone the same email

Problem – Emails are being ignored and possibly even reported as spam.

How do you know you’ve got this problem? – If you are using a subscription based email service, check your unsubscribe and open rates.  It may be easier to send every email to the whole of your database, but if it is resulting in your subscribers ignoring you, you are in danger of damaging your brand.  Remember, useful emails to some may be spam to others.

– Again, break down your database in to smaller lists.  Can you define people by the products they have bought?  Or where they have subscribed from?  Is there an opportunity to make a special offer to just those who signed up for a free report you offered last year?  If you want a lesson on targeted emails, just buy something from Amazon or Tesco.

Spray and pray marketing may feel like the right thing to do when you desperate to find more clients.  But don’t!  Take the time to focus on your target clients, focus on their common problems and focus on providing a solution that is right for them.

Niche is the key to successful small business marketing.

Got a comment to make? Do take a few moments and leave your thoughts.

Other articles you may be interested in:

1. Ten Top Tips for Marketing Your Small Business
2. Do long sales letters really work?
3. The Marketing Drip Feed – Are you doing it?