Copyright 1999 Carol
Ann Waugh
Because so
many libraries use wholesalers when ordering books and other products,
my clients always ask me for specific ideas to help them develop
an accurate in-house customer file. As marketers, we know that customers
are our bread and butter – not only for selling our backlist
but also for introducing new product. And, we know we should market
to them more frequently than we market to prospects. So, developing
an in-house customer files is an important job and part of our marketing
budget should be devoted to this objective.
Of course, the first avenue of inquiry is to work with directly
with your wholesalers develop a program with them to receive a list
of your customers from them on a quarterly basis. Perhaps if you
offered to pay them for each name, you might get their attention!
But failing that, here are some ideas you can use to today to begin
building this important source of future revenue:
- Insert cards into the
front of your products before you shrink wrap them at the bindery.
These cards should contain a compelling offer to encourage the
buyer to complete the information requested (name, title, institution,
etc) so that you can use this information to identify this person
as a customer. Compelling offers that work include the word
FREE! Offer a free poster, a free report, a free book, a free
anything.
- Send
out a survey to the entire market and ask them to indicate which
products of yours they have in their library. Again, give them
an incentive to respond with their name and address. Often,
including a $2.00 bill (a donation to their coffee fund) will
do the trick. Or, offer to donate a book to their local school
– or directly to the library itself. Or, offer to compile
the results and send the report back to them.
- Begin a telephone campaign
to identify your customers. While this is perhaps the most expensive
approach, it will pay the most dividends over the long run since
not only will you be gathering invaluable information about
your customers and prospects, you will also begin developing
that all-important "relationship" with them.
- Use every marketing
channel at your disposal to collect information about your customers.
Collect information from your sales force, your contacts at
exhibits, your web site. Assign someone in your database/fulfillment
department to be directly responsible for creating and maintaining
your customer list. Funnel all information to that person and
have a report that tracks how many customers are identified
on a monthly basis. Establish realistic goals and measure them.
If you, like many of my clients, claim that 50-70% of your business
goes through wholesalers so you can't identify your customers, implementing
some of all of these ideas will result in the percentage of "unknown"
customers dropping significantly. Once you can identify your customers,
you will have the opportunity to reach these customers more frequently
and this will increase your revenue return on your marketing investments.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
This article was written by Carol Ann Waugh, President of Xcellent
Marketing, a marketing and new business development firm specializing
in the educational and library market. Xcellent Marketing offers
a variety of marketing services to help publishers increase their
revenues and profits from identifying new markets, providing critiques
of web sites and marketing communications such as direct mail, catalogs,
advertisements, etc. as well as developing effective traditional
as well as Internet-based marketing plans. Carol can be reached
at (303) 388-5215 or at cwaugh@xcellentmarketing.com.
|
