54 messages before a response? according to this rule, yes.
by rob nixon
if you want to grow your client base then you’ll need to massively grow the size of your prospective client database.
more on strategy: how to dominate the internet | be an ‘object of interest’ | marketing must be about sales | turn your knowledge into products | why clients really stay | how to create 4 new billable hours per day | do you know what clients want? | is your business by design or default?
exclusively for pro members. log in here or 2022世界杯足球排名 today.
it’s all about getting your target market to enter and opt in to your database. once they have entered, the objective is to grow your prospective client database into a clean and receptive database.
the size of your prospective client database will depend on your marketing capabilities and your growth targets.
let’s say you want to grow your active client base by 26 percent each year – which means you double the size of your client base every three years. it is commonly known in marketing circles that it takes nine times for a targeted prospect to hear or see a message before they act.
the problem is that because of proliferation of marketing messages that we all receive, as consumers we only get to “see” every sixth message that is sent to us. i call this “rob’s rule of 54” – nine times to hear it and only every sixth message sent is seen. before the turn of this decade i used to call it “rob’s rule of 27” – nine times to hear it and three times to see it. our attention spans have reduced by around 50 percent and we are getting more messaging than ever before.
it takes more creativity, more discipline and more patience to get people to respond these days. based on my theory you need to send up to 54 messages before you get a response!
if that’s the case then the size of your prospective client database is a mathematical equation. based on my equations (verified by a very accurate spreadsheet) then your prospective client database (based on 26 percent growth of client base) needs to be 14 times the size of your current client base. the table below highlights the size your database needs to be based on the volume of clients you want to acquire via marketing methods.
once you know who you are targeting you can work out where they hang out and target them. you could find out which conferences they attend. what publications they read. which websites they frequent and so on. with the objective of creating a large list of names that you can market to, your appearance (in a variety of forms) where they hang out is crucial to building your list.
based on your privacy laws in your country you may be able to buy a list of your target market or you can use a wide variety of techniques to attract your prospective market to your database. one of the best ways to grow your database is to find other non-competing companies (hosts) who have your target market as their current target market and arrange a beneficial marketing campaign. for example you could write a white paper based on your expertise and have the host company email it out so their list can get access to the paper. the prospective client fills in their contact details and now you own the name. there are many other techniques such as “remarketing,” social media usage, seo and nurture sequences to attract and create lists.