On Feb 10, 2011, at 4:54 AM, Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote:
I have read through this whole thread, and while I observe some good
thinking going on, there really isn't anything earth-shattering about
the approaches being discussed. Targeting businesses has been
discussed in the past, but what I mostly hear being suggested is that
we change our jingle.
News alert. I don't think that we have failed in our marketing efforts
at all. In fact, I think the results we are getting are typical for
the particular media approaches we are employing.
In general, it is pretty common for media marketing to produce very
small percentage returns. While it's a great approach for large
companies who are targeting large populations, it is probably not in
the BB's best interest. I am sure all of you receive spam mail, and I
suspect that 100% of you absolutely hate it or completely ignore it,
but alas, probably about 0.00001% of people who do receive it become
repeat customers which makes it a very lucrative business for its
proprietors. But ironically, it also means none of you probably become
the customers. These stats tend to be true with many types of media
marketing.
Lets do some numbers. Let's say we have a $70k budget and we spent
about $25,000 last year, and Morgantown's MSA (Metropolitan Statistical
Area) population is 118,506. Let's say 40 people took our course last
year. That means, our costs were $625.00 per each individual, and our
market penetration was 0.00034%. Note: I am guesstimating some of
these numbers.
Just for demonstration, let's say that after everything is said and
done, we are paying $525.00 in marketing costs for each person we are
bringing into our program What's wrong with this picture? A lot.
Here is the solution I suggest. Let's employ a traditional sales
approach. Initially, we will find people who are interested in
marketing our program.
What approach do you recommend to "find people who are interested in marketing our program" and who would implement your approach? From your writing below, it seems people that have completed TS101 or that have demonstrated that they know the material would qualify as marketers. I ask who would implement your approach because it won't happen unless somebody does it so the first job would seem to be to find somebody(s) that will take this on.
This is the fun part because we wouldn't have
to pay them $525 for each person they successfully get to enroll in our
program, we could pay them $50 or $35 or maybe even $25 for their
effort. I could see this approach being really successful at WVU.
First we would ditch offering free courses to WVU students. If you
were a WVU student and you could make $600 by convincing 12 of your
friends to enroll and successfully complete the course, wouldn't that
motivate you to market our program? Yes!
Do you mean that the City would pay our "marketers" $25 for each person that they got to sign up for the course?
Now here's a creative approach building on Aira's concept of raising
our price. Let's raise the price to $100, but lets give our marketers
coupons with their sales ID written on it. If their friend brings the
coupon when they enroll, they will receive a 60% discount or maybe even
a 100% discount! Once they complete the course we will offer them a
sales ID which they can use to invite all their friends and
associates. But, because good marketers aren't necessarily people who
have taken our course, we could open up the marketing program to anyone
who is a good marketer, i.e., we would interview them first, and if
approved, hire them as an independent contractor and provide them with
instructions on how we want our program presented to the public.
Are you personally willing to manage this?