Still marketing by the seat of your pants?
One Simple Tool that Helps You Rule
Jul 31, 2024
By Bob Stimolo
Imagine building a house with nothing but your hands, or making marketing decisions by throwing darts. That is not too far afield from how many of us manage our marketing programs. However, some tools will allow us to develop better strategies. Too few of us understand or make use of them.
Teachers in Customer Schools are Better Prospects
Teachers talk and share. Educators in schools where you have customers are more likely to recognize your products. If a teacher is pleased with your product, other teachers in that school are more likely to know about it. If you sold something to the school, you are an approved vendor.
You can match your customer file to an education database and identify all the schools where you have customers. You can include sales data and rank the matched schools based on their sales.
Then, you can select prospects from those schools based on their ranking.
Match Rates Vary
Typical match rates for schools run between 55 and 65 percent. Match rates for educator names run between 30 and 40 percent. Even at those rates, the process can identify numerous prospects in schools where you have customers.
Lots to Gain
Does undertaking this process make economic sense? It depends upon the match rate, the size of your customer file, and the margin you enjoy on your sales. However, it allows you to reach the best prospects in the market – those educators who work in the schools that buy from you. And they are bound to perform better than those prospects in schools that do not.
Every marketing manager in education sales should understand this process. There is no obligation and no cost to learn more about it. I can walk you through the details and you can decide if this marketing tool makes sense for you. Contact me at rstimolo@smriinc.com.