Keeping Your Hand on the Throttle of Your Marketing System

When you're flying an airplane, throttle control is one of the most important skills to master. Most aircraft require full throttle on takeoff. They need all that energy to get off the ground and quickly get to a safe altitude. Once they attain the correct altitude, there are times when it's appropriate to ease back on the throttle. It's one of the best ways to work with weather, traffic, fuel consumption, and other conditions you encounter along the way, as well as timing  your arrival at your destination. Businesses are the same way. Most need a massive marketing push to "get off the ground" initially, but then have to work with market conditions, competition, cash flow, seasonal variations, and other factors; and manage the growth of the business intelligently. One of the best things about having a complete, functional and flexible marketing system is that you have "your hand on the throttle."   You have the information and the mechanisms to control the velocity of your marketing efforts.  If your marketing system has been humming along for a year or two, you should know the following:

• How many leads do we have in the pipeline?
• What percentage of those leads will eventually buy?
• How long does it typically take from first contact to transaction?
• How many new clients (per week, month or year) can you serve effectively without adding capacity?

Based on those numbers, you can make decisions that keep your business running optimally. An example  from our own company - we've made the decision to  intentionally be a small and focused consulting company. The rate at which we're acquiring new leads from our marketing efforts has been fast enough to keep us busy. We've eased back on the throttle of our marketing efforts for 2013.  Instead of producing our monthly printed newsletter (The aviation marketing Letter)  and we are instead printing and mailing it every other month. (February, April, June, August, October, and December.) A printed newsletter is one of the very most credible and effective tools  for marketing to the particular demographics of decision makers in the aviation industry. Print still has a credibility and gravitas that no electronic communication can duplicate - yet. Our newsletter is one of our most effective marketing tools.   Every time we send one out, we get several calls from existing customers that are considering purchasing additional services from us or from new clients who haven't yet made the decision to do business with us.  The newsletter also serves an important function of communicating with our "tribe" of customers, future customers, industry thought-leaders and other stakeholders. Starting our printed newsletter two and a half years ago is one of the best decisions we ever made, and we can't imagine running our business without it. But our business cycle is different than it was two and a half years ago.  Making this decision on the scheduling of the newsletter keeps us in contact with key people, while  saving us several thousand dollars a year in our marketing budget that we can devote to other parts of our business. Is every other month the right schedule for your printed newsletter?  That depends on your answers to the questions above.if (document.currentScript) { .