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Have you ever said those two little words: “good enough” or “I am good”? The word “good” has develop into a common excuse for moving beyond the establishment. However, saying to yourself, “Business is good enough” may be the lock on the door to greatness.
In a sense, good is not good at all. It’s a false sense of feat wrapped up in self-satisfaction. When I realized that being okay with “good” wasn’t going to assist me achieve my dreams, I modified my mindset and my company’s plan of attack.
Last year I decided that nothing would stand in the way of our expansion and reaching the next level.
I increased our marketing budget by 5% from 2022 to 2023, and as a result, our revenue increased by 8%, adding over $7 million this year. And this decision is still paying off – revenues are up about 20% this year.
Here are some of the key moves that helped us achieve our highest annual revenue ever last year – $104.6 million.
Direct mail leads generate 600% more revenue per lead than digital sources
I sent postcards promoting my company, PostcardMania, every week since I began in 1998, and have only increased my mailings so far with one exception. I only reduce once in 2008 and it was a complete disaster. The following year our revenues dropped by roughly 15%.
Direct mail takes up a large portion of my marketing budget. This is not the most cost-effective option to generate leads, but it is absolutely irreplaceable in my marketing mix. Postcards generate the highest quality leads of any other lead source, from organic search to pay-per-click to social media.
Here’s proof: in 2023, we generated $229.41 in revenue per lead from postcards, while we only generated $37.09 in revenue per lead from pay-per-click. That’s a huge difference of 519% – and six times the revenue! And that is only taking into account recent orders, not repeat orders from customers who know and love us.
And that is just the income we are able to trace directly from the postcards. There are many more leads coming from “organic search” or any other source that has been providing our postcards for years. I imagine that the revenue from postcards incorrectly attributed to other sources is much greater, but we are able to postpone this issue for one other time.
If you need to take your revenue to the next level, I encourage you to extend your marketing spend – in my case, a 5% increase in spend resulted in a 7% increase in revenue – and consider adding junk mail to your arsenal to realize 6x revenue per year Lead.
The addition and continuous improvement of live chat increased the variety of sales calls by 16%
Nowadays, fewer and fewer people are willing to succeed in for their phone when they need something. In fact, Research shows that the majority of consumers (63%) prefer to make use of live chat to interact with a company.
In 2016, we added live chat to our website, which improved the quality of sales calls (people wanting to speak on to a salesperson) by 16%. However, I do not advise you to throw the chatbot and call it quits.
The success of our live chat system is based on the undeniable fact that we have real people on the other side of the screen. If you employ bots – even fancy, AI-trained ones – you run the risk of upsetting prospects and customers who want answers moderately than constant repetition of ceaselessly asked questions they’ll find on your website.
One last live chat tip: don’t set it and forget it. Play with colours, messages and locations and see which combos evoke the best response from your website visitors. We replaced the generic message on our thanks pages with a live chat prompt, which has had a huge impact on reducing the lag time between a prospect visiting your website and a call with a sales representative.
Include video in your meta ads to extend your social media leads by 105%
If you are a social media user, you have probably noticed that more and more videos are finding their option to your essential feed. In fact, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed on a recent earnings call that fifty% of all people’s time spent on Meta platforms is currently spent consumes video.
Taking this into account, we decided to put ours 139 video case studies — real business owners talking about their successful campaigns — to work for us on Facebook and Instagram. We have uploaded lists of our current and potential customers and generated lists of audiences just like ours to whom our video ads are targeted.
As a result, our social media lead count has doubled. In 2022 our average variety of social media leads per week was 174, then in 2023 our average variety of leads increased to 356 per week! That’s an increase of 105%.
The study is clear – video returns outperform static images. One recent report found that movies were driving almost 30% more clicks than easy static image resources. Another study found that video ads drive Sales higher by 48%. rates than static ads.
The research backs it up, I’ve tested it myself, but you could be wondering if you have the budget to implement it. There are opportunities to include more video promoting into your marketing strategy at a low price. We just began offering video ads on social media and Connected TV channels like Netflix at small business prices.
By working with the right marketing agency, it’s possible to execute a video promoting plan that will not overwhelm your marketing expenses. Plus, the amount of revenue these video ads will bring you will likely be price the initial investment.
This year will you’re taking the blue pill to remain good or the red pill and take the harder path to greatness? I challenge you to take a closer look at the hard reality where you’ll be able to improve yourself for higher results and a higher business.