When it comes to spending marketing dollars, all businesses need to be savvy about where they are spending their money. However, I find so many investigators waste money. I am going to share with you six tips to market effectively. One cardinal marketing rule is to understand that all marketing that can be done doesn't work for all investigative businesses. You must identify what type of marketing works for your business.
1) To identify what type of marketing works for your business, you must first identify your market. When I ask my clients who their market is, I often hear "everybody," which is not true. If you think everybody is your client, you will definitely waste your marketing dollars. Let me explain - if you have an investigative company that focuses on cheating spouses, the "general public" is your market. However, if your company focuses on criminal defense investigations, "criminal defense attorneys" are your market. Each of these markets needs to be reached with different marketing strategies.
2) Once you have identified your market, you must learn how they find investigative services. This is where you do in-depth research on your own or hire True Perceptions who knows your markets and understands where your market looks for you because we have exclusively been helping investigative companies such as yours for 20 years. Please note that hiring a marketing company that does not understand your business or market will cost you money with no return on investment (ROI). Additional Tip: When someone calls trying to sell you marketing or advertising, the first thing you should say is, "Please tell me who my market is." When they cannot do this, you instantly know they are not familiar with your business or market and are only trying to sell you what they have and not what you need.
3) After identifying your market and where they look for you, you are ready to learn ways to appear in those places. For instance, if your market is "cheating spouses" and they look for you on the internet, which means you need to be at the top of page one on Google. If your market is "criminal defense attorneys" who do not look for an investigator on the internet, but through referrals and networking, you must find the way to become a company other attorneys would refer and show up at the suitable networking events.
4) Next, you have to identify the best ways to put your company's marketing in the right places. Example: If your market is "cheating spouses" and you have to be on page one of Google, you must spend all your marketing dollars on search engine optimization (SEO). However, if your market is "criminal defense attorneys" who don't look for you on the internet, spending money on SEO is useless and a waste of money.
5) It is critical to track how your marketing is doing. The best way to do this is to ask every person who calls how they learned about your company, then record it on an excel sheet. This accurate data will allow you to make needed adjustments to where you spend your marketing dollars the following year.
The bottom line is that all marketing should revolve around your market and how they look for you. Always remember each market is different and requires different marketing strategies.
If you need effective marketing strategies to increase your revenue, call Ture Perceptions for a free consultation at 678-583-0401.
