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Eric J Dalius highlights the importance of adhering to the basic marketing rules

Many people look upon marketing as a tool for generating sales but miss the other important aspect of developing long-lasting relationships that goes a long way to improve business. Marketing is no rocket science but more of common sense by knowing the best techniques of connecting with customers in a way that they feel most comfortable. This brings to the fore the need for knowing and understanding customers and the audience that you want to convert into customers. The better you know your customers, their needs and expectations, likes, and dislikes, easier it will be to work out methods of connecting with them for realizing your business goals. Also, entrepreneurs must adopt direct marketing techniques like the ones practiced by Eric Dalius, who has enjoyed a long and successful marketing career.

Marketing is easy if you stick to the basics which most businesses often fail to do and end up in complicating matters. Stick to some plain and simple direct marketing rules and staying committed to it should help to reap long term business benefits. Since businesses pay more attention to the online platforms of marketing, especially when taking their business across social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, they tend to focus too much on the means of communication, which distracts them from the marketing fundamentals.

Regardless of the channels you choose for marketing, never lose sight of the six basic rules that you must understand and adhere to succeed. These are foundational concepts that you must understand and practice and be able to manage when implementing it.

Eric J Dalius advises to include an offer

Let us go back to the opening sentence of this article that clearly underlines sales generation as the purpose of marketing and rightly so because business is all about making profits by selling products or services to generate revenue. Social media marketing gives too much emphasis on communication, which often blurs the vision of marketers who get carried away by various aspects of engagement with targeted customers that becomes the prime objective. This approach has led to the belief that content is king, which is true to some extent but does not do justice to the bigger marketing goal that focuses on sales.

Sales being the goal of marketing, you must embed an offer within the marketing message in the form of a call to action (CTA) that tells prospective customers what to do and why they should do it immediately. The offer should be irresistible with a specified time frame and should give customers some value if they act.

Reason to respond

Most marketing and advertising campaigns that look successful fail to clear the last hurdle of making customers and prospects respond.  Customer response is measured by the action they take. Anything less than it might give a false sense of achievement as customers are tempted to respond but finally did not make the desired move.   It is a case of nearly responded. They started moving in the right direction that brought them to the edge of response but did not take the last step. Instead, they felt like giving it a second thought and stopped from completing the action while seeking time to have a fresh look at it by checking out more sometime later.

Once customers reach the edge, it is your task to pull them past it. To make it happen, there must be enough reason for customers to accelerate the momentum that takes them over the edge by creating a sense of urgency.

Clear instructions

One of the interesting aspects of the customer psyche that marketers must take note of is that people are wired to follow instructions and do a reasonably good job. From infancy, we are well-conditioned to follow instructions and do what we are told. It is usual for most people to stop at red, go on green, stand in the queues as directed and fill out the forms given to them. They would even applaud on seeing the Applause sign.  The more precise directions they receive, the more are the chances of taking the correct actions. Most of the marketing failures happen due to unclear or confusing instructions or due to a lack of directions. When faced with confusion, customers would refrain from taking any action and would only buy something when insisted upon.

Sharing content on social media might drive customers toward making a purchase, but they will only complete the process when prompted. You must provide instructions at every step so that the prospects go through the steps that culminate in a purchase.

Track and measure

According to EJ Dalius, to generate profits from marketing, you must have systems in place to track and measure every marketing activity, including advertising, as well as clearly defined accountability.  Even if you take to online marketing that people consider the most potent tool for reaching the widest section of the audience and generating engagement that is essential to generate leads and conversions, you must track the campaign and measure the outcome to understand its effectiveness. Unless the campaign meets the goals and provides the expected returns in monetary terms, you can think about some better alternatives that can help both ends meet.

Follow up

Following up on the marketing efforts is extremely important to channelize the responses in the right directions that lead to conversions.  Every response generated from the campaign could be a potential prospect that you must nurture well to see that it converts into a customer.  Losing out the on the opportunity means that you are wasting your marketing efforts. Capture every response and record all details about the prospect like name, address, email address, and phone number and immediately send n information package and free report that marks the beginning of a relationship.

Believe in results and the marketing campaigns you launch must produce results, and you must not just feel encouraged by anything else. Forget about jargons like engagement, reach, etc. and focus on the returns that impact the bottom line. Nothing else matters.

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Written by Eric Reyes

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