There’s a saying that’s been around for a while: ‘half my marketing / advertising dollars are wasted. I’m just not sure which half.’
Adopting a ‘closed loop’ approach to marketing can allow you to better identify which dollars you’re investing and which you’re simply spending. Over time, this approach can ensure a far higher level of your marketing spend is put where it will generate the greatest return. You can develop a deeper understanding of your customers, which will benefit your organisation in areas such as new product development and product portfolio management.
So what is ‘closed loop marketing’? Essentially, it’s marketing that’s designed to generate a response from customers to every communication, recording the responses, then using the responses to build a detailed customer profile. You learn what they are looking for, their preferences, their barriers, and where they are on the purchase cycle.
With every new layer of information your understanding of the customer improves. Your communications become better and more closely targeted. It’s like looking at a pixilated photo and filling in the dots over time, to a point where your customer view becomes crystal-clear. So, over time, your message becomes more personalised and more relevant the individual customer. It’s basically shifting the focus from what you want to tell them, to what they want to hear. And this is the most effective route to a sale. The result: exponentially better return on investment, increased customer loyalty and increased accountability.
These days, it’s possible to get much closer to customers. Websites and electronic point of sale systems can be used to manage responses to marketing messages, with information filtering through to your customer database. You can then use email, SMS, mobile advertising, direct mail and your website to directly target the right message to the right person at the right time (see article ‘I’d like Web 2.0…I think?’). You can also use the detailed customer profiles to increase the effectiveness of your mainstream advertising.
Want to find out how you can turn more of your marketing spend into ‘marketing investment’? Give icemedia a call and have a chat to one of our expert ‘closed loop’ consultants.
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