Healthcare Advertising

With any investment comes risks; therefore, it is very important to track all forms of marketing and advertisements that your company partakes. Do you know how many sales your marketing tactics are bringing to your company? You should know every month that your $200 weekly newspaper ad is bringing in "X" amount of dollars. If that investment is paying off, then you continue it. If not, consider revising your ad content to something a little more eye catching. If after a set amount of time, that ad is not driving in at least enough business to pay for the ad, then nix it. The same goes with all of your other forms of marketing. Make sure you track the results so that you can continue and eventually increase the forms of marketing that work for your business. If you go with a random marketing campaign and you don't track your results, you are setting yourself up for an empty bank account, because all forms of advertising don't work for all businesses. So how do you track your marketing? If your business does any kind of volume, you can't always just ask each person how they found you. One of the best methods is to create unique coupon codes for each of your marketing schemes. For example, if you have a newspaper ad, offer a $10 off coupon with ad and include a unique coupon code to be scanned or entered with your point of sale software. Most point of sale software these days are capable of accepting discount codes. Then at the end of the month, you simply run a report for all sales relating to that specific coupon code. You then compare your sales from that unique code versus the amount you spent for that marketing campaign and determine whether or not this investment is paying off. If not, consider tweeking it a bit or doing away with it altogether. Another option is to mention a free gift when you mention this advertisement and give away medical custom imprinted promotional products to that customer. The best way to track this is to treat the giveaway like a sale item with a $0 price tag so that it gets scanned into your system. Then just like the previous example, compare the amount of sales to the cost of your Free Gift campaign. For Yellow Page ads, use a different phone number that can be tracked. The yellow page ad for my company has a separate local number only used for that specific ad and phone book so I can track the amount of calls from that ad. I only pay $5 per month for that line but I know how much the ad is or isn't used. There are a lot of debates now about whether or not print is dead in relation to Yellow Page directories, so this is a sure way to know if it's working for your business. It may also be a way to judge whether or not you should advertise under a different category in order to be found easier by those looking up your services.It is important to mention that some of your marketing is done simply for branding purposes. Many of these marketing tactics won't directly bring in business, but they keep your brand and your company at the top of consumers' minds. An example would be sponsoring local middle school and high school sports teams. Your logo is printed on their sports programs or t-shirts and your money goes to support their team. While you often don't see direct sales from this type of marketing, you do keep your company in the spotlight so when those exposed need your services, they will contact you first. Also, helping your local community with sponsorships is a great way to win the hearts of your own locals. Again, I ask you, "Are you measuring your marketing efforts?" If not, I highly encourage you to do so. Your marketing should be spread through several different channels to reach the majority of your buyers. This should include online and offline advertising. Make sure each one of your marketing tactics is trackable in some way so you can measure the results. Marketing for each business often starts out as trial and error and then modified for maximal success. In order to know how to modify your marketing strategies, tracking is a must. Don't waste any more money, start tracking your marketing today!

The vast majority of people selling in the promotional products industry are not selling to their full potential. This article is meant not to criticize, but to inspire sales professionals to be authentic and inspect the strategic foundation to take their business to the next level. In a perfect world, a sales professional would be selling big orders on a high margin with great customers that are extremely loyal. This book of business would grow annually by 30-50% (regardless of the economy).

This is a great goal but for most it is completely unrealistic. In my opinion, very few professionals in the medical promotional products industry ever achieve this high-level of sales nirvana. The reason is simple; they have very little to no leverage within their business and take a reactive approach to managing their business.

Let's look at 3 different points that all sales professionals should incorporate into their business:

1. Customer Leverage - If you are servicing a high diversity of clients with a broad subset of needs - you may still be writing business, but you're creating very little leverage across your customers. To gain customer leverage, you must find an industry vertical where you can be the top in that space and be considered an expert in the field driving repeatable business that maximizes your domain expertise.

2. Selling Leverage - My skin crawls when I hear of a professional doing collections or calling on suppliers to check order status. As a sales professional you make the most money in front of customers, selling your products and services. Anytime spent on back office or administrative duties is negatively impacting your earnings. A simple formula to measure your selling leverage is identifying what your earnings/hour. Then go a step deeper and what you make per hour when you are selling. Start outsourcing everything lower than you get paid per hour.

"If you spend your time, worth $20-$25 per hour, doing something that someone else will do for $10 per hour, it's simply a poor use of resources." - Tim Ferriss, Author of The Four Hour Work Week.

3. Technology Leverage - In today's economy the majority of professionals do not have any technology leverage. By technology leverage, I am specifically speaking about technology that gives you the ability service 3X the number of buyers, market to 10X the number of prospects and build a business that is more sustainable with the technology-savvy buyer demographics. My fear for most industry professionals, they position themselves to lose relevancy if they don't incorporate technology leverage into their business. (Need proof - see the travel agent industry).

"In this new wave of technology, you can't do it all yourself, you have to form alliances." - Carlos Slim Helu, Wealthiest man in the world in - 2010

So my formula to grow by 200% over the next 2 years:

A professional should be seeking leverage in three areas of their business. Only embracing 1 or 2 will leave money on the table.

Happy selling%u2026 let me know your thoughts on other solutions you have found to create leverage within your business.