So why do so many companies keep doing the same old thing, and expect anything different? It’s insanity.

If you’d like to break out of the same old routine, and produce some real results you need to try something new.

Here are 12 great marketing ideas you can try in the coming months to achieve better results.

12 Marketing Ideas you can implement to produce better results

1. Update your strategic positioning so you really stand out from the competition
2. Create a new offer, like a payment plan, to make your services more affordable
3. Simplify your website to make it easier for customer and prospects to do business with you
4. Do an SEO Makeover to achieve a #1 ranking so prospective customers and buyers can find you on the web
5. Get other websites to link back to you using Off-page optimization to boost your search engine rankings and your website traffic
6. Start a Business Blog to establish thought leadership and niche dominance
7. Implement a Social Media Marketing Program to share your ideas with your followers
8. Create a Pay-per Click Program to augment the leads you’re getting from other sources
9. Test Landing Pages (Landing page optimization) to maximize the results from your Pay-per-click budget (you can do a lot with $200/month)
10. Create an Affiliate Marketing program to get others to identify opportunities and generate leads for you
11. Implement a Marketing Automation System with powerful marketing automation sequences to educate the prospects who aren’t ready to buy yet and convert them into ready buyers who want to do business with you
12. Accept Credit Cards online with Automated Recurring Billing to reduce time spent on invoicing and collecting payments from customers

How many of these ideas have you already implemented? Are there any other ideas you’d add to this list? What are you doing to ramp up your marketing activities?

The most successful companies are continually trying new ideas to achieve better and better results. That’s the only way that you can hope to improve.

So why aren’t companies more adventurous when it comes to trying new things?

It’s the “I hate brocolli” syndrome of marketing and business.

If you ask the average CEO, “What’s the rationale for the way you’re currently marketing your services?”  Many say: “It’s what we’ve always done.”

The sad truth is that many companies are engaging in the same old tried marketing tactics rooted in strategies that were developed eons ago (a.k.a. 2007).  They’re wasting money on tactics that are not rooted in any real, current strategy – or based on the realities of today’s marketplace.

How to get higher response rates and higher conversions

 Any Direct Marketing old timer will tell you that the secret to getting and maintaining high response rates and higher conversions is: “Test. Test. Test.”

In fact, there are some who say that  30% of your budget should be set aside for testing.

If you’re testing new ideas agains the old ones it’s the only way to know for sure that you’re marketing is continually improving. 

Apply the principles of continual improvement to your marketing. In Direct Mail it’s called “A/B Splits and Multivariate Testing.” In Google Web Optimizer it’s called “Marketing Experiments.”

Test everything. Test in order of importantance. Your offer, your keywords on your pay-per-click ads, your landing pages.

Or if you don’t really want new and better results, you can just keep doing what you’re doing — what you’ve always done.

When Warren Buffet speaks, people listen.

Recently I happened to catch Warren Buffet on TV talking about how leaders should set business priorities.

Buffet was saying that you should run your business like it’s a family business–one that you are going to hold onto for 100 years, and the #1 thing you should think about is how to build a sustainable competitive advantage, like building “like a moat around your castle.”

If you look back to medieval times, moats were excavated around castles as part of the defensive system–an obstacle immediately outside the walls–and usually they were filled with water.

A good moat made it difficult for your enemy to access your walls with siege weapons, such as towers and battering rams, which needed to be brought up against a wall to work effectively. A water-filled moat made it impossible for your enemy to dig tunnels under your fortifications in order to effect a collapse of the defenses. A good moat protected your castle and everything in it.

The wider your moat, the longer you can protect your profits. The deeper your moat, the more profitable you are.

“Understanding your customers” is key to building a good moat

If you’ve followed him for any time, you also know that Warren Buffet invests primarily in companies that “understand their customers.” To me this means companies that make Marketing a priority in their strategic plan…, not just the 4 P’s (Product, Place,  Price, and Promotion), but also RSPT (Research, Segmentation, Positioning, and Targeting).

In essence, applying the Fundamental Principles of Direct Marketing not just to your Marketing but to all your Operations.

One of the best ways to protect your profits and build higher margins, the key to a successful business, is to continally work to understand and serve your growing customer base. The way you do this is by mastering the Fundamentals of Acquiring and Managing Customers:

1. Find a suspect (on a good list or use of demographics)
2. Convert the suspect to a prospect (a lead),
3. Convert that prospect into a customer (an account),
4. Convert into a regular customer or multibuyer (someone who has purchased from you 3 times or more), and
5. Convert that regular customer into an advocate for your business who provides you a testimonial and a stream of referrals.

Literally all the things you can do to protect your profits and increase your margins derive from “understanding your customers, managing this fundamental process, and managing it well, i.e, all of the traditional methods of creating a competitive advantage: (1) Product Differentiation (2) Branding and Positioning (3) Pricing Strategies (4) Locking in customers, and (5) Locking out competitors derive from making great offers, establishing a real relationship with your customers, and being responsive.

“Understanding your customer” is the equivalent of protecting future revenue streams, and forms the basis of value. It’s the modern-day equivalent of building a good moat.

With this perspective, what are the competitive threats in your environment, i.e., the towers and battering rams that could impact your profitability? And what are you going today, this week, next month, next year to ”build your moat and protect your relationship with your customers?”