What is Lean Marketing, exactly?

Improve your marketing

Everyone’s looking for results. 

Is there a sure-way method to find them?  

Yes–if you take the time to measure your results, which many companies are simply too busy to do.  

“You can’t improve what you  can’t measure.” 

Many companies think they’re practicing “Direct Marketing” without taking the time to measure and report the results… they enjoy the results, but they don’t try to figure out how they could do better. 

Like Direct Marketing, Lean Marketing is targeted, personalized, measurable, but most importantly, it’s improveable.  

As consumers, and as business managers, we’ve all seen successful examples of Direct Marketing. You go to your mailbox, open your mail, and there’s a letter that stands out — it comes from a real person directly to you with an offer designed to delight you and make you want to respond.  

As marketers, if you use Direct Marketing regularly, you know that for every $1.00 you spend you can get $20.00 back, or $24.63, or whatever. Predictable return on investment helps you with your budgeting, your cash management, and your profitability.  

Lean Marketing is Continual Improvement applied to Marketing

Lean Marketing is Direct Marketing with a commitment towards improvement, i.e. it’s Quality Management or Continual Improvement applied to Marketing, which can be illustrated by the PDCA Cycle that was popularized by Edward Deming, who is widely recognized as the forefather of improving design (and thus service), product quality, testing, and sales.  

The PDCA cycle is designed to be used as a dynamic model. The completion of one turn of the cycle flows into the beginning of the next, creating a “virtuous circle of continual improvement”. The process can always be reanalyzed and a new test of improvement can begin.   

1.  PLAN: Establish the processes needed to achieve an acceptable response rate and a cost-per-acquistion of new customer. 
2. DO: Implement the processes 
3. CHECK: Monitor and measure the processes and report the results 
4. ACT: Take action to test new ideas and maintain and continually improve the response rate and the cost-per-acquistion of new customer. 

By testing new ideas, i.e., New offers, new creative strategies, new package formats, you’ll continue to make improvements… and in the process you’ll acquire new customers, sell them more, get them to refer others to you, and ultimately you’ll be a stronger and more profitable company.  

By monitoring and measuring the processes and reporting the results, you’re able to quickly see what’s working and what’s not working, which will then allow you to align your budget with achieving your company’s strategic objectives.  

And that is why Lean Marketing is so powerful.  

Lead Marketing is Direct Marketing the way it’s meant to be practiced.

Pages related to Lean Marketing :

• Direct Marketing 2.0 applies the principles of quality management to your marketing so you can measure and improve your ROI

If you’re looking for a consultant who can help you implement Lean Marketing in your operations please contact me.

You want to know how to get better results?

"I don't want to..."

Everyone says they want better results.

So why aren’t companies more adventurous when it comes to trying new things? Do they want to know how to get better results?

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 better results: Higher response rates and higher conversions

“Nothing fails like success.”

There an old saying: “Nothing fails like success.” People get a little taste of success. They get lucky because they tried something, and it worked, so they naturally think that if they just keep doing whatever it was that made them lucky, they’ll keep enjoying success.

Unfortunately, times change.  So what worked once, at one moment in time, may not work today. That’s why it’s important to continually test new ideas. 

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. That’s how to get better results.

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.

Posts related to “How to get better results”:

• 12 Marketing Ideas to Grow Sales

If you’d like someone to help you test some new ideas and show you how to get better results, please contact me today.