Use the five magic boxes in your marketing to bring more results

The interesting thing is that all successful businesses – the ones who grow huge from marketing – are using the five boxes to get better results, even though many of them are not even aware of it.

Box 1. Lead generation

This enables you to measure where your leads (potential customers) are coming from and how many are coming, e.g. from newspaper ads, website, word of mouth, radio etc. It lets you see what is effective in drawing people to your business. Remember that the more you do this, the better picture of your business you will have.

Box 2. Conversion rate

This enables you to see how many of the leads coming into your business are being converted to customers. We would all like 100% but that is not realistic, so you need to measure what your conversion rate really is. To do this you need to see how many customers you end up getting and then compare this to the number of leads you have. e.g. in an average week you may have sold to 30 customers out of a total of 100 leads who walked into your shop. Your conversion rate is therefore 30%.

Box 3. Number of Transactions

This lets you see how many times customers will buy from you. Do they pay a monthly fee or maybe are due for a mechanical check twice a year? Originally you will have a gut feeling for this but over time more concrete data will help. With this information your Holloway Marketing Consultant can look at practical ways to increase the number of times your customers deal with you, e.g. telemarketing to your database of customers and letting them know of a promotion or seminar that you are running.

Box 4. Average Dollar Sale

Finding out what the average sale is worth to your business is really interesting and could be surprising – either it will make you happy or show you that you need to lift your game! Once your average dollar sale has been identified you can look at ways to increase the amount people spend with you each time they come back. This is surprisingly easy to do and can easily add 25% to your turnover over time. By multiplying the number of customers by the number of transactions and then the average dollar sale, you find out your turnover from those customers.

Box 5. Profit Margins

This is a critical part of the equation. You have to know your margins to see what kind of profit you are going to end up with. After you have found your turnover multiply this by the profit margin to get your profit. Again, your consultant can work with you to show you how the margin you are getting can be improved.

Did you know that 80% of people only read headlines?

The headline is by far the most important part of your ad!

If it doesn’t appeal, the rest of your ad WON’T get read. The more headlines you run in your newspaper ad or brochure – and the more graphic information you include in your TV ads the better! Research shows 80% of people only read headlines! Because most people only read headlines, you should give them lots of different headlines to read. Writing advertising headlines that sell more product is actually very easy if you follow these simple tips:

Always include at least one benefit in your headline.
Never forget that people DO want to know about your product or service – you might be bored with it, but they aren’t!
Newspapers and magazine editors use long headlines because it’s the easiest way to make your headline interesting. Holloway’s headlines are always long – you should use long headlines too!
Talk about what interests the customer, not what interests you. (E.g. If you sell furniture, you will be interested in the fact that no-one else carries your range. But your customers want to know how comfortable it is, and how long it will last.)

Click here for common sense help to get your ads working for you!

By putting the boxes together we get a powerful picture of your business and where it is at. This is how they all fit together if we use an example of a business who has built up enough data to get an average for a week:

Take the leads you have on a weekly basis (for example 100) and multiply these by your conversion rate (30%) to find out how many customers you will sell to in that week (30).
Now multiply (30) customers by the number of times they will buy from you in the next year, (let’s say they will buy 4 times), this gives us (120).
Now multiply (120) by the average dollar sale, (let’s say every transaction is worth $100), this gives us your annual turnover for those (30) customers (which is $12,000).
Now we multiply this turnover figure by your margin (which is 30%), to get your profit from these (30) customers (which comes out as $3,600)

Not bad! And if for your business you can be adding more and more leads and increasing conversion rates to get more customers who are buying more than they currently are and spending more each time, you can see how your turnover can quickly jump up. Then if you can improve your margins your profit levels will be on the increase as well. This is where Holloways love to get involved – in the nitty gritty of your business.

Want free marketing tips delivered straight to your inbox?

FREE Marketing Tips for Kiwi Businesses!

Our regular FREE Marketing Tips for Kiwi Businesses newsletter is available now by email. We’ll send you frequent free information packed with tried and tested ways to increase enquiry and convert more sales. We’ll also teach you ways to sell more to existing customers and why it’s so important to look after the customers you already have. You’ll learn what sort of media works best when advertising and why this is. These top tips come from the Holloway team’s own experience of our internal marketing as well as things we have learnt through providing marketing expertise to clients all around New Zealand. With regular updates emailed to you, you won’t want to miss any of them. Simply complete the form to the right, to receive this newsletter jam-packed with helpful information and advice.

Signup for our FREE 'Marketing Tips for Kiwi Businesses' Newsletter

Simply complete the form below to receive free helpful information and advice on marketing, sales and advertising delivered right to your inbox!