The 80/20 Marketer

You signed the marketing budget. What did it buy?

Every company that sells to other businesses can tell you how many leads it got last year. Almost none can tell you what they were worth. Most of what it will sell this year goes to customers who have bought from it before, and that's where its marketing almost never looks.

Bill Canady gives chief executives a marketing method built on one number, Fort margin: the margin earned from the few customers who make the company its money, old and new. Then come nine steps in three stages, drawn from three decades of running industrial and distribution businesses: aim small, say one thing, spend where it pays.

At the book's case company, marketing spending fell from $1.40 million to $1.13 million in a year, and the cost of a qualified conversation fell from $34,146 to $9,912. Fort margin rose $760,000 against a plan of $1.1 million, and the book shows where the rest went.

Find what your best customers spend with everyone else, and get written into the specification before the bid goes out.

Promise the buyer less risk, and be remembered by the few hundred people who decide.

Count all the money it takes to win and keep a customer, test your favorite program before you fund it again, and keep what you earn from leaking out on the way to the invoice.

Your team does the work in The 80/20 Marketer · The Field Guide.