Planning Your Marketing

1. Basic Marketing Objectives

Every marketing activity you undertake should help you to achieve at least one of the four results below.

1.1 You retain your existing customers, provided they contribute to your profitability.

• A poor retention rate means you have to spend heavily on promotion and sales, to replace the customers you have lost.

1.2 Your customers make larger purchases.

• Replacing two £1,000 orders with a single order for £2,000 improves your profitability, as you halve the cost of selling and admin.

1.3 Your customers purchase more products from your range.

• It is generally much easier, and therefore more profitable, to make an additional sale to an existing customer than to make a first sale to a new customer.

1.4 You win new customers.

• Identify your best customers (see 4.2) and target new customers with similar profiles.