DESIGN YOUR OFFER

Below is a list of sample offers that have been used with its marketing efforts. While not complete, this list should give you a good idea of where to start building your own offers.

• Self-Running Demos. These give customers the chance to interact with your product or service. They involve minimal cost, but require you to spend time with customers to demonstrate, or can be downloaded from your Web site.
• Case Studies. These show customers your experience and capabilities and involve minimal cost and time, and can be easily distributed to a broad range of customers online or through the mail.
• Customer Needs Assessments. These personalized offers assess the compatibility of your products or services and customer’s needs. They can involve a signifi cant time investment, but help the customer more fully understand the benefi t of your solution.
• Customer Software Evaluations. These provide hands-on interaction with potential solution and involve minimal cost.
• Seminars. Customized engagements get you face-to-face with customers and prospects. Seminars can involve cost and time investment, but can be a great way to demonstrate your expertise in a personal way.
• Webcasts/Webinars. Customized Web engagements provide an inside look at your capabilities. They involve an investment of time, but are comparatively costeffective and have a potentially broad customer reach.
• White Papers. Showcase your industry knowledge to interested parties with minimal cost and time. Additionally, these can be easily shared with a broad base of customers.

CREATE YOUR CAMPAIGN

Determine your message and build your campaign considering:

• Business letter brochure
• Business letter mailing—letter and envelope
• Customer satisfaction survey
• HTML e-mail
• HTML Web splash page
• Newsletter content
• Postcard
• Poster
• Print ad
• Radio ad script
• Self mailers
• Text e-mail
• Web banner ad
• Banner and sign

MEASURE YOUR SUCCESS

The success of an offer can be more easily measured by evaluating the response from the customer call-to-action. A well-crafted offer often results in immediate response from the time of customer receipt. Depending on the type of call-to-action (i.e., phone, e-mail, survey, landing page or business reply card), the measurement and time of response will be different.

For example, an e-mail call-to-action is immediate, but many customers may not use e-mail to respond. A business reply card may be more time intensive for customers to fill out, but the respondents may be more qualified if they take the time to fill out the response. One tip would be to try multiple ways to respond to an offer to give the customer a choice.

Here are a few measurements you can use to judge the effectiveness of your marketing efforts:

• Measure ROI. Return on investment figures will show you the success of your promotion based on the time and money allocated for the campaign. For example, if the offer is a fixed cost such as a book, this figure will help you calculate how much you spend for your offer compared to how many responses, leads, and ultimately closed sales from your original investment you received.
• Web and E-mail Tracking. Electronic communications such as Internet promotions and e-mail offers enable fast, accurate feedback on campaign effectiveness. Make sure you carefully record responses by adding a promotion code to your response or asking for required fields when replying to the offer. Online is a costeffective way to track and deliver on the offer, but if you can’t capture the information you need, your ROI becomes lower.
• Customer Preferences. By monitoring responses, or testing different offers, you can gain a better understanding of what type of offers and call to actions work best for different types of customers. Testing can save you a large amount of money when learning about what makes your customer interested in you.

KEYS TO SUCCESS

• Customize. If your Web site can support it, customize your calls-to-action based on visitor profile, search terms, and/or click-through rate.
• Create immediacy. Set expiration dates on your offers, so customers have a reason to stop procrastinating.
• Be blatant. Feature your call-to-action prominently on your printed piece or electronic promotion. Most readers only scan, so the more obvious your offer appears the more likely it will be effective. (Tip: Don’t be afraid to showcase your call-to-action multiple times.)
• Streamline. For electronic promotions, hyperlink words, and phrases from Web sites, e-mails, or newsletters that lead directly to your call-to-action.
• Entice. Offering relevant gifts to customers may add cost, but it tends to inspire loyalty and encourage contact. (Tip: Offer a white paper or book on a hot industry topic that directly relates to a service or offering you provide.)

PROBLEMS TO AVOID

• Don’t annoy. Avoid pop-up or pop-over electronic ads. Users generally find these frustrating and rude.
• Don’t spam. Avoid communication systems that automatically e-mail Web site visitors who have not contacted you directly or approved the use of their e-mail address.
• Keep it simple. Don’t make users work hard to respond to your offer.
  Make it easy to understand and locate, and make sure readers believe the value they’ll receive is greater than the effort they’ll have to exert in order to receive it.
• Be direct. Never assume your customers know what you want them to do.
• Be clear and up-front on required action, whether it be calling, clicking, or e-mailing. (Tip: Give your prospect options, i.e., “you can call or e-mail to receive this free security assessment.”)