Get Greasy

Ask yourself this, how much more effective could your ISP be if your sales team did not have to work harder to close 10 to 20 percent sales each day? Would your revenue situation improve if your sales team spent 80 percent of their day pitching your ISPs services to 20 percent more qualified leads?

Sometimes you can justify making marketing investments based on how the return from other investment activities within your ISP could be enhanced. For example, let’s say you decide to upgrade your mail server and incorporate spam filters into your ISPs mix of e-mail services. Now, you have a tangible investment made in another area of your business to utilize as a reason to call existing customers and sell them more services, while recruiting new subscribers to join your fold.

Grow grass roots
While it’s true that most newbie ISP owners start out with zero marketing dollars and work their way up to developing marketing expenditures as their sales increase. But let’s face it, there’s not too many newbies out there anymore and savvy ISP owners know that having no marketing budget doesn't mean that you can’t initiate marketing activities!

It means that you need to be more creative with your grass roots marketing programs, which might including hiring the local boys or girls club to assist with mailings or lowering your costs to get the word out about what your ISP can do for the business or residential communities in your service area. The marketing possibilities are endless.

ISP-Planet’s Marketing Orbit is chock-full of low-cost marketing ideas you could put to work at your ISP today. From How To Sell Stuff To Your Current ISP Customers, to A Fixed Wireless Marketing Case Study or Billboards, to How To Improve Customer Satisfaction with SLAs. And if that isn't enough to get you thinking about how to market your ISP business during tough times, try joining the ISP-Marketing group on the ISP-Lists and talk about what grassroots marketing programs work and what was a waste of your marketing time and money.

Dual game plans
How much you spend on marketing also depends on whether your ISP is executing a growth maximization or a profit maximization strategy.

A growth maximization strategy will burn more marketing dollars than a profit maximization strategy, because you may be willing to test different venues for distributing your messages or try new marketing methods altogether.

If your ISP is implementing a profit maximization strategy, you may have already invested hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in marketing activities to identify which marketing investments create your ISPs highest return, so that you actually increase your sales profits by only initiating marketing activities that have a guaranteed return on investments.

Sparky’s marketing investment tips
Many newbie ISP owners ask me to give them a percentage of what their marketing investments should be. I can only offer you the facts based on my marketing experience—allocating anywhere from 1 percent to 20 percent of your total sales revenue for investing in your ISPs marketing activities will help grow future sales.

For larger Internet firms, like Intel, without heavy investment in Research and Development, their business future is doomed. I don’t believe that the average ISP owner needs to invest heavily in R&D, but I am certain that if you do not invest in marketing activities, your ISPs future revenue, sales viability and business will suffer.

Marketing your ISPs services does not always have to consist of traditional marketing methods. Whoever said that marketing has to be advertising, print, TV, radio, newspaper, personal letters, online, Internet, Web or e-mail venues only?

Tough times for your ISP business means that it’s time to think outside of the box and invest in building online communities that give value to your core client base. The time is right to find low-cost ways to retain your existing subscribers and attract news ones to your fold.

Granted, this may be a new way of thinking about your marketing methods because the Internet access industry is still young. But I am certain that when you explore your ISP marketing opportunities and think about building community services as part of your sales and marketing functions, you will help grow your ISP business. You will retain your current subscribers and build a profitable future on new customers earned from your marketing investments made today—during these most challenging business conditions.

Remember, when the going gets though, the successful ISP owner gets marketing.

To Your ISP Marketing Success!
—Christopher M. Knight

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