It never ceases to amaze me how many companies (large, medium or small) still do not put much score on having and maintaining an active, up-to-date database of their customers. Direct marketing, and database management, started coming to the fore at least a dozen years ago as a cost effective method of marketing goods and services to identified groups of people.

The ?old? marketing era was about companies mass communicating with a market by shouting out what they've got to offer and providing information on how the customer could contact the company. This was really a sales approach not a marketing one and has caused a lot of confusion as to what marketing is about. A classic example is where someone places an advertisement in the paper that has their logo as the headline, a picture of their product and maybe a caption describing what the product is/does. They then put a telephone number on the bottom and hope that someone phones them.

While this still has a role to play in some mass (often retail) marketing campaigns to build awareness and provide a brand building opportunity, it does not hold much ground for focused one product companies or service organisations. It simply doesn't work and leads to a lot of dissatisfaction in terms of ROI (return on investment).

The ?new? marketing era talks a lot about defining your target market (who you want to buy your product/services), and about defining who an ideal customer is for you. It then looks at collecting information on where you can find them, who they are and how you can make contact with them.

Obviously it is easier if you are an established business. It sounds quite complicated but it needn't be. Define the characteristics of a good customer eg buys over a certain amount of your products/services monthly, is a leader/active person in the marketplace or industry, is situated in areas that you can service effectively, pays on time, is pleasant/fun to deal with etc. Once you have the criteria that define an ideal customer for you, brainstorm on your own or with your team, where you can find more customers like this.

Establishing a prospecting list will make the personal selling process so much easier later and will enable you to remain very focused on who you want to talk to about your products/services.

You will then be able to establish some specific characteristics of those people. Do they belong to a group/club that you can tap into, do they belong to associations where you can build relationships, do the congregate in certain places annually where you can have a presence etc. Look at ways to creatively extend the number of people who come into contact with your name so that top of mind recall is created as they become consistently exposed to your company.

Once you have made contact with people, capture the information and back it up so that you do not lose their details. I speak from experience in losing information. I had a data-base that took 5 years to build and when my hard drive crashed I lost it all! It took twelve months to rebuild and I still have not located some people who were valuable contacts. Your database is your most important tool and someone must be accountable for maintaining it and backing it up regularly (at least monthly!)

If you employ sales staff this is particularly important. I cannot tell you how many times I've heard companies bemoaning the fact that their top salesman just left and took his little black book with him with all the customers and their details neatly written but not captured by the company. This provides the salesman with a wonderful personal marketing opportunity when applying for another job but is potentially a disastrous scenario for you.

There are some wonderful products on the market to assist you in developing, maintaining and sorting database information. There is absolutely no excuse for not having a list of clients, both existing and potential, that you own and utilise fully.

The beauty of direct marketing is that it is the most cost effective tool in the marketing tool box and it is one of the few that allows you to totally control the message, the delivery style and the contact frequency. And, on top of that you can personalise it completely for no extra cost.

What are you waiting for?

Yours in Marketing
Dianne Perrett