How often have you poured good money after bad on a marketing program or message that wasn’t working just because you didn’t have the time to come up with a better idea?

Make today the day you find the time to stop wasting money on a bad campaign (or no campaign at all) and find something new.

• Change where you are marketing, from one publication to another.
• Change how you are marketing, move from print to online or even outdoor.
• Change who are you marketing to, by trying a different demographic.
• Change the places that you market, from one event or association to another.
• Change your message; pick different words to describe your value proposition as see how people respond.

Shake things up. Then measure the results.

Once a lead is in the pipeline, you need to nurture, nurture, nurture them until they convert to customers. Because your field sales personnel can’t possibly call these folks every week (and that kind of pestering would be downright creepy), let your frequency marketing campaigns do the work for you. It is not uncommon for purchase decisions professional services to take several months and for technology to take up to a year. Regular professional touches delivering updates and educational material about your biz, your industry and your products help keep your company of mind so that when the prospects is ready to purchase — next month, next quarter or even next year — they think of you.

Marketing is not like lima beans, you can’t try them once and make a decision on the spot that it doesn’t work for you. Yet I continue to run into businesses who use that excuse when I suggest that better or more targeting marketing efforts might improve their bottom line. I try to give the benefit of the doubt when meeting a new biz owner and assume that they are at least doing something — thus the suggestion that there might be room for improvement — but that isn’t always the case.

One direct mail campaign, one e-mail blast or one display ad is, for a great many, a waste of money. There are lots of rules about the number of impressions required before your audience recognizes and reacts to your offer — with somewhere between 3 and 7 as the rule of thumb — but the general idea here is that you have to keep plugging along.

The first time your audience sees your message they may not even recognize it. The second time it may trigger some kind of awareness of the product category or offering. Hopefully by the third time they’ll remember your name.

The key is not only awareness and recognition but being in the right place at the right time: when your best prospect is ready to make a purchase decision. Sure, once in a while those single wave campaigns actually land in the lap of a prospect at the right time and they get the business. But this is pure luck that rides on the back of a competitor that already established awareness and education for the product category.

When I worked for a direct marketing firm, we typically planned all campaigns in 3 waves. Today we encourage clients who want to see the greatest ROI to invest only in programs that they can sustain for a full year.

Typically this is the plight of organizations run by really smart and highly educated professionals like engineers or attorneys. They know they are really good and what they do. And they have a high expectation that prospects will recognize the value they deliver without any push in the right direction.

Unfortunately, sometimes your customers aren’t as smart as you are and they have to be taken by the hand and led to your great idea. By making the time to explain to them not just what you do but how what you do can make them successful, you’re educating your audience and building loyalty for your brand.

The more complex the subject matter, the greater the opportunity for the delivery of educational material. This education process can take place in many formats and forums besides the ones pushed out from your internal marketing department. Highly educated professionals are sough-after for public speaking and by-lined article contribution. But it takes a little investment in PR to secure these opportunities.

Successful operators will always be the ones that get out in front of their audience early, beating their competition to the punch. Besides, there’s nothing worse than losing business to a provider with less expertise who will ultimately do a mediocre job of satisfying your prospective customer.

So why aren’t these a plus for my client? Because they aren’t interesting.  The entire reason companies host events at entertainment venues like the GA Aquarium or in a suite at Turner Field is because of the innovative venue. While you don’t have to go to the lengths of booking an entertainment location for your next event, sometimes a nice restaurant can make a big difference.

The same idea holds true for individual meetings as well as events. Next time you’re trying to secure a prospect for a lunch, consider bumping up your investment a bit from an $8 sandwich place to a $14 plated lunch with white table cloth service. You’ll see a measurable difference in the outcome of even that 1:1 event.

This week I received a postcard from the photographer. He used my images as the art on the face and included a thank you on the back. Thi was a fantastic use of the medium and the properties he had.

Placing my photo on the card immediately captured my attention and made me read it but using the image he had created further reinforced shis value and our relationship.

He actually used SendOutCards for production, which doesn’t work for all but proved to be a great platform for his purpose.

This approach could easily be transferred to any business who creates images for their client — graphic designer, illustrator, even architects or perhaps a dentist or orthodontist to who takes before and after glamour shots.

$15,000 in Direct Mail = 200 new customers

$7500 for a billboard = 300 new customers

$0 on Twitter = 1800 new customers

Wow! Who wouldn’t jump to twitter with that math? But we have to recalculate the costs here to find the dose of reality.

While $15,000 probably includes design, production, list rental and postage not to mention possible test marketing efforts, it is still a lot, especially if the value of a new client is only $25/each.

$7500 for a billboard could be a one month rental in a prime area or design, skins and a multi-month rental in a lower rent market (I currently have a client spending just $500/mo for a board in a suburban market). New customer value at that same $25 and you’re breaking even.

1800 new customers with no cost? 18000 of those $25 clients is a fabulous return. But wait a minute.

How did you get the content on twitter? Who wrote it? How many tweets were involved? What did you tweet? Where did your tweets send them? To a website where you had to develop content? Who recorded or wrote that content? What was the cost of the person monitoring your tweets or tweetdeck? What was the cost of the developer creating landing pages for your tweets? And for the copywriter writing your content?

The idea that social media is free is a bit of a smoke-and-mirrors proposal. Social Media has great potential to promote your company, especially with the right offer and to the right audience. But don’t kid yourself into thinking it is free. Budget and plan for it accordingly and you will reap far greater ROI than if you treat it as a “free” medium. And remember, sometimes direct mail and outdoor still have a place in your mix.

“He is as smart as they come in the world… and a tireless worker.”

You and I both understand that it’s not possible for the recommender to know whether this guy is the smartest in the world and would let this pass but for those attorneys who are very precise about everything they put in print, this was a problem.

So say you’re not an attorney, how does this point help you with your planning? Well, consider whether you have any professional memberships or employment obligations that require you to follow certain guidelines about the advice you provide or the accolades you receive. It’s a slippery slope here and while I think the example of Paul Arne’s partner was a bit extreme, it’s a valid concern and one that you need to consider where you’re an individual contributor or a business owner looking to set standards for your team.

BTW, if you’re not an ABC subscriber and want but can’t download the full text of the article, ping me and I’ll share my copy.

On a more serious note, registering domains similar to your own is a very smart approach, especially if you have a hard to spell or hard to remember domain. For instance, we have a client named Stien. Every time I try to send him email, I spell his name Stein in the classic way of Ben Stein. It would be a logical choice for this man to register both spellings of his name as a URL just in case folks make an error.

For that matter, Microsoft probably should have had the foresight to register these mispelled names themselves. How often do you fat-finger a site and find yourself redirected to the place you really wanted to go to begin with? Businesses are smart enough to already be taking this approach and if they aren’t, they are learning fast.

The other savvy approach marketers are using is to not only register variations of their own domains but variations of their competition, too. Why not? If it allows you to get the traffic you’re looking for, it is a completely legitimate strategy and one you should explore. It’s no coincidence that GoDaddy.com suggests alternate variations on  domains when you register them. Take advantage of their offers then use some creativity and come up with a few more.

As for the exercise equipment company’s domains, you can bet that Microsoft will probably be buying those shortly anyway.

Email sounds great on paper but for most small business, email lists are still an obstacle. They don’t have them and can’t afford to rent them or they can’t find one that matches their target demographics. But they’ve bought into the idea that dmail and postage is too expensive when email is cheap (or free) and so they reign in their dmail budget and do little or nothing in the email space.

Direct mail still deserves a place in your marketing plan though perhaps with a smaller part of your budget.

Gone are the days when dropping generic letters or cards to thousands of rented names each month makes sense. In their place small biz marketers are finding that customized communications to a smaller and more targeted list are not only more effective but can help them stand out. Don’t get discouraged because you don’t read “junk mail.” You are not your client and if your communication looks like junk, then you’re doing it wrong.

A personalized package with customized info sent priority mail to your target will stand out. A hand written note on company notecards will get their attention. A humorous postcard with an exaggerated graphic may be just the reminder they need to keep your name and your business top of mind. Complement the sales calls, emails and other tools in your marketing mix with a good dmail piece and reap the rewards ignored by your thrifty competitors.