12 Stack Marketing
From: The Desk Of Direct Response Marketing Consultant Alan Forrest Smith
If You Want More and Have To have More - Read!
There’s nothing new in what I am about to share with you yet most businesses and probably your business hasn’t, doesn’t and will probably never do it yet – it’ll change everything for you.
Let me first take you back to 1991 and one of my early direct response marketing adventures.
Not to far into 1991 I had moved my business premises from 250 sq. feet to 2,000 sq. feet. I had to fill the business with paying customers and fill it fast. Baby No.2 had just arrived so failure wasn’t an option.
In those days everyone just ran an advert in the newspaper every now and then, maybe even every quarter. Most of the 35 salon businesses in the town I was based rarely ran ads.
So I took my ads to a logical progression and it was this.
If one advert could bring one new client surely creating more adverts using different strategies would create even more clients.
So I created something I called ’12 Stack Marketing”
The number 12 arose due the fact I had 12 marketing tactics I would use daily in my salon businesses.
Before I even got to the salon I planned well ahead with exactly what was to be done EACH DAY in the stack. The only day it wasn’t done was Saturday but if we had a slow Saturday it would be done.
The stacks looked a little like this and bear in mind even today most businesses only use one or two ways to advertise their businesses – if any at all.
So my stack looked like this.
- Flyers
- Vouchers
- Joint ventures
- Posters
- Tent cards
- A-Boards
- Window signage
- Referral vouchers
- Business cards
- Script
- Direct mail
- Thank you postcards
And when email finally took off as far back as 1998 I started emailing clients daily and using my website and an online forum to keep my salons busy.
All these years later my clients today are still making the same mistakes with marketing and you might just see yourself in here.
Even if you have a healthy business, even if you have enough profits and even if things are just
OK enough to just do OK marketing.
Here are a few of the most common and loss-creating mistakes I am seeing today in marketing.
- NO marketing done at all
- Marketing created by staff (would you allow a hospital porter to operate on your heart?)
- Over reliance on LinkedIn only
- Over reliance on Facebook fan page only
- Over reliance on Social Media
- Sticking to what they know despite the lack of results
- Over reliance on in-house teams with not enough experience
- Believing marketing is a cost not an investment
- Failure to ask for advice even in the darkest moments
- Failure to listen to experts despite the results
- No planning
- No strategy
- No vision
- No outcome
- No plan
In other words most companies just do marketing when they feel like doing it or the books are not as high as they want them to be.
The problem is with that is the massive volume of sales that are lost.
For example going back to my 12-stack system above.
As part of that system I would direct mail every week without fail a missing client list or clients that hadn’t been to the salon for 12-months. The average return from those lists was 65-70%.
The increase in takings was obviously huge.
Not too long ago I did something very similar with a company that was experiencing no sales from their one single tool – LinkedIn. We did a direct campaign to their in-house list.
They went from one lead a day to SEVENTEEN LEADS in a single hour! You read it right I said 17 in a single hour.
Why and how? I created a stack marketing system for them that worked.
So if you a just following the pack, doing what everyone else are doing or being advised to do you could be heading for problems or maybe you are having problems now.
If you have no marketing stack in place you will
- Lose sales
- Lose loyalty
- Lose leads
- Lose enquiries
- Lose against your competition
- Lose presence
- Lose position
- And probably lose your mind!
Going back all those years to 1991 did a few things me for.
It gave me the number one salon business in a town of 35 salons in just 18-months. It also gave me the glory and rewards for working hard in a business that supported 16 staff at the time.
But it did this.
It gave us the ability to switch on and off paying customers as we needed or wanted them.
The stack is something I have repeated many, many times for businesses just like yours with some astonishing results over the past few decades.
Would you like me to create a 12-stack strategy for you that will give you results most businesses will only ever dream about.
Of course working with myself is strictly for the entrepreneur that will not settle for anything less than the very best result.
Shall we talk?
Stacking will give you...
- MORE sales
- MORE loyalty
- MORE leads
- MORE enquiries
- WIN against your competition
- MORE presence
- MORE position
- And keep your mind!
You can call me direct right now on 07793 069 486 (UK 00 44). Either leave a message or text/SMS and I will call you right back as soon as I am free.
Or go to the form on my contact page and I will personally get right back to you.
Here's to many years of stacking together...
Direct Response Marketing Consultant Alan Forrest Smith