June 11, 2007

Growth Strategy

Your forecasting analyst suggests your telephone sales will decrease by ten percent next year, while your online sales will increase by ten percent next year, yielding flat corporate growth.

Your CFO is unhappy with this projection, and demands that the business grow by ten percent next year.

There are many ways you could grow the business. Here's a sampling of opportunities:
  • Catalog Strategies
    • Add catalogs to the mail plan (currently at 30 in-home dates each year).
    • Add pages to each catalog.
    • Remail catalogs to the same customers.
    • Increase circulation in each catalog --- either customer acquisition or reactivation.
    • Other ideas?
  • E-Mail Strategies
    • Increase e-mail contact frequency from one per week to two or more per week.
    • Increase the number of targeted e-mails from five versions per contact to ten or more.
    • Other ideas?
  • Online Marketing Strategies
    • Improve natural search opportunities.
    • Spend more on paid search, or be smarter about paid search.
    • Increase affiliate partners.
    • Spend money on portal advertising.
    • Start a corporate blog.
    • Other ideas?
Prioritize the top three ways you would try to grow sales, and describe why you would use the techniques you chose to employ? Which strategies do you think drive the most incremental sales, at the lowest cost?

4 comments:

  1. Anonymous2:41 AM

    "Improve the product" didn't make the list? Marketing blinders!

    :)

    Alan

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous5:17 AM

    I'm with Alan, and would take the question even beyond the product... what about expanding the prospect universe?

    Why are your growth options so channel-centric?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Alan, your smile hints that you have had experiences suggesting this to, oh, say, merchandising executives?

    Ron, you certainly can expand the prospect universe, so long as you can do it in a cost-effective manner.

    And there's no reason growth options have to be channel centric.

    ReplyDelete
  4. First of all do not believe all that analysts say. You should ask why will my telesales be less effective? People using phones less?

    There is no doubt that competition is getting tougher and that there is an increased need to differentiate with telesales messaging. A better understanding of product, targets business processes and competition is required.

    There is also no doubt that the web is growing as a decision influencer. I've seen great results with domain specific sites that initiate discussions and provide valuable content.

    ReplyDelete

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