“The way customers buy is changing profoundly. This mandate changes the way marketing and sales engage and develop customers. Leads that translate into qualified opportunities are at the core of the new engagement strategies. Focus on quality, rather than quantity. It provides a clear path to align critical activities to produce the best result.” (David Brock, President, Partners In Excellence)

The critical activities required to turn your qualified leads into new customers start with three initial marketing segments: Market, Media and Offer.

In this post we are focusing on Market:

Define your target market as largely as you can without sacrificing the target. Tightly define this market based on:

    1. Industry
    2. Geography
    3. Firmographics
    4. Titles
    5. Psychographics
  1. After defining your market the next step is to segment it. Direct marketing Lists drive 60% of the value of any direct marketing campaign! This calls executives to understand the different segments represented in ea. list. it is important to understand that most lists no matter if they are response lists, subscriber lists, controlled circulation publications, compiled files, etc… have advantages and disadvantages. Is it possible to weed out the titles and names that just do not represent the same value to your company as the others? Yes, the secret is segmentation. This takes large compilations of names and breaks it into smaller cubes, or layers of like individuals, or companies.
    1. Geography
    2. Revenue
    3. Number of Employees
    4. Growth Percentages
    5. SIC Codes
    6. Decision Making Levels

We will be taking a deeper dive into relational segmentation, media and offer in the coming posts. Please stay tuned for more on turning your companies raw leads into qualified opportunities and ultimately sales.