Database Marketing
The key to good SEO is good marketing: both in terms of a website's content and a sound client focus for the business. At Woogloo, we always start by explaining exactly how marketing works then put those lessons into practice. The foundation for all marketing and advertising is the Database Marketing model. If you understand this, you will be far ahead of any competition and well on the way to the top of Google ranking.
What is a business?
On the surface this sounds like a silly question, but in reality if more business owners/managers had a better understanding of what a business is and how it fundamentally operates then we would see less 'train wreak' businesses leaving bad debts and dissatisfied customers behind.
A business is a system - or a set of systems that are interconnected. The picture above illustrates this system. With understanding comes answers to questions such as:
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"What are seasonal highs and lows, depressions and recessions?" and "Am I in control of my business if I don't control the cloud?" (see Let the good times roll - how to turn your seasonal lows into highs).
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"What does 'working in, not on, your business' actually mean?" and "What do I need to do to change that?"
(see Active vs Passive Client Relationship Management (CRM) - how to automate your sales and marketing).
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"How can I get back my free time while still keeping up regular communication with my clients?"
(see Email Marketing How To: part 1 - the basics of good email marketing).
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"How do I stop clients leaving my business?"
(see Email Marketing How To: part 2 - how to automated client retention).
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and many more...
The database marketing business model
Why do we term it 'database marketing'? We believe this name best illustrates how businesses work and focuses us on what to look for when critiquing a business and its effectiveness.
By the way, even though computerized databases are relatively new (i.e. the last 50 years) this is not a new system. Claude Hopkins was first to lay down some of the rules around direct marketing and advertising in his book Scientific Advertising, originally published in 1923, and David Ogilvy expanded on Hopkins thinking in his book Ogilvy on Advertising, published in 1983. We have simply illustrated the basic principles behind these two great works to make it easy to understand. Adding the word database helps people see the implications of this model in a modern computerized business context.
The key component behind any database marketing business is the client data. This is usually represented as a water tank with layers of different types of water in it. Each layer symbolizes customers at differing levels of involvement in your business - e.g. prospects, clients, good clients, referral client (or affiliates), etc.
There is a leaking tap on this water tank which signifies clients that leave the business. This is either through 'natural attrition' (i.e. the customer moves away or the company you are dealing with goes out of business) or from 'unnatural attrition' (i.e. poor service, low quality products, inadequate client communication, etc.). Part of your marketing should be geared to 'shutting the tap' - i.e. eliminating any unnatural attrition. Remember, it costs 8-10 times more to get a new client as it does to keep an existing client.
A database marketing business is geared around 'massaging customers'. That is, promoting to existing clients (below the line advertising) in order to move them from lower layers to higher layers. This process is represented by a conveyer belt inside the tank.
Any advertising to the public (above the line advertising) is designed to generate sales leads - i.e. collecting more client data to add to your database. This is represented by a person with a bucket going out to collect more 'water' to put into the tank - and indeed this person could be your actual sales staff doing 'cold calling' or 'networking'. This is also typically the extent of any ordinary website - i.e. simply another public facing advertisement.
A cloud denotes the market (or your target market) and rain signifies customers searching for a product or service to meet their needs. When it rains over your tank, this is termed referral business - or 'word of mouth' advertising. Beware that the weather is unpredictable so one cannot run a business reliably on simple referral business alone. 'Seasonal' highs and lows are the norm for this type of business model - there is either feast or famine, and both are equally hard to manage.
So an important question to ask is: " how do we do database marketing without a database?" The answer is you cannot!! This is why any business must have at its core a database for storing and managing client data.
A website should be a database marketing system. That is, a computerized mail order business that uses the internet to connect with clients instead of traditional snail mail.
What is more, a Woogloo is designed to automate almost every part of this process: closing the tap, massaging clients and generating new sales leads. At long last, this is the promise of computerization delivered - not just greater efficiencies, but a fully automated business.
So where are you in this picture? You're not here! You are sitting on a beach somewhere enjoying life - working on your business, not in it.
For a deeper explanation of this system contact us for a free consultation.
Get a FREE copy of Terrence Bull's book, which has a full explaination of Database Marketing - including a step by step guide with illustrations: go here>>
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