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4 Steps to make your Marketing more Effective

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‘How to win at marketing and drive more sales?’: this must be the most frequently asked business question of all ‘How to win at marketing and drive more sales?’time.

  • Every individual and Organisation wants their Marketing to make life easier and drive success to them

Yet time and time again we see massive under-performance in actual results versus prospective results.

So, in this day and age, can we look at marketing in a more enlightened way?

The answer is, of course, yes.

If we stop asking how we can market ourselves better and instead start taking the following four steps, we will definitely get better results:

1. Change our beliefs.  We need to stop trying to market ourselves and start trying to wow the customer: confidently and consistently in the certain belief that, if we do this well and make it easy for customers, they will want to engage with us and buy more from us.

2. Stop designing Marketing systems and processes aimed exclusively at making a sale. Instead they need to be aimed at impressing the customer by harmonising with their real (emotional) needs.

3. Spend our Marketing budget on building relationships through consistent small steps.  Customers hate to be sold to, but love to buy.  They hate it when we try to take large, obvious steps to get their custom but they love it when our systems and processes use small steps to impress and energise them.

4. Have ‘lead’ measures.  Marketing Departments need to stop obsessively measuring reach and numbers.  Instead they need to start using new measures (known as ‘lead measures’) that empower and energise continued improvements in customer loyalty, reputation and relationship.

In short, the answer to how to win at Marketing in the world of the empowered and joined-up customer is to:

  • go slower and turn the Marketing process on its head
  • focus all Marketing systems, processes and actions on wowing the customer and fostering customer trust

In the world of Social Media and the empowered customer, it is madness to assume that we can ‘market’ to anyone.  The customer now chooses their own route to market.

The real winners in marketing are those who realise that by taking it slowly, not trying to sell to everyone, and designing systems and processes across all areas of their business to systematically blow customers’ socks off, they achieve blow your socks off long-term success and profitability.

And that is how to truly win in the long term.

If you like what we’re saying and want to know more, without any obligation, please email support@salesthroughservice.com and ask for our free ebooks on ‘The 7 Deadly Sins of Sales and Service’

3 Reasons why your Marketing may not be working

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Marketing drives sales, right?

Wrong.

In a world of the empowered customer, the old ‘marketing drives sales’ model is becoming grossly out of date.

Sure, marketing is still very important: it’s just that the order of action has changed, and marketing now fits in differently, and may have a very different role.

Here are 3 key reasons why you current Marketing may not be working:

  1. Push rather than pull: most marketing is based simply on a ‘push’ philosophy, and indeed this is still taught at most business schools. The reality of a customer empowered world is that your customer doesn’t believe a word you say when you’re trying to push them: they can find out all they need to know about you from reviews on the web, discussion forums, and comments on social media. Intelligent marketeers in this new world change from trying to ‘push’ to trying to ‘pull’, through being genuine, responsive and truly remarkable.

2. Polishing a turd: let’s face it, we all want to hype ourselves up a bit, and present a ‘click bait’ image to the                 world: yet, we need to get a grip on ourselves and stop trying to polish turds. The empowered customer will find           the truth over time, and if we’ve quietly under promised and over delivered, they’ll love us and promote us to              their friends. If, on the other had, we’ve over promised (which is known as ‘normal’ in many marketing circle),            and then slightly under delivered, our unpolished turds will be lain bare for all the world to see … and there’ll be          nothing we can do about it.

3. Your agenda, not their agenda: the traditional approach of marketing is to try and expose how ‘great’ we               think our products and services are, in the most efficient way possible, to our target market. The reality is that             customers don’t give a damn: they’re only interested in what they want, and how your product or service will               solve a need in their life. In a world where customers can research answers to their needs at the touch of a                     button, any place, any time, your opinion on the ‘greatness’ of your products or services is now irrelevant, and             instead just gets in the way of your customer finding what they want. Focus instead on making life easy for your           customer, and giving them the perception that you genuinely care about their needs.

A good example of ‘new marketing’ would be: publishing articles that don’t sell anything, they just add value to the reader. If the reader gets value from them, they may well then contact you when they need some help in that area. Like this article!

In a nutshell:

  • In the old world of one way mass communication, and the relatively dis-empowered customer: your marketing was the mainstay of your route to market: it was the best solution for you and your customer.
  • In the new world of two way mass communication, and relatively empowered customers, your marketing instead needs to add value to your brand and customer relationship: then, and only then, will they spread the word to those around them. Then you’ll be a winner.

So, what to do about it: see our next blog: 4 steps to make your marketing more effective, which will be posted soon.

If you like what we’re saying and want to know more, without any obligation, please email support@salesthroughservice.com and ask for our free ebooks on ‘The 7 Deadly Sins of Sales and Service’

What sort of marketing works best?

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What sort of marketing works best?

Oh, the time honoured question!

Henry Ford once famously said, ‘I know 50% of my marketing works, I just don’t know which 50%’

The good news is that we’re living in an age of easier measurement and trackable customer behaviour.failure is the opp

The bad news is that there has been an almighty explosion in routes to market and competition is springing up all over the place … often where you expect it least.

we suggest that the whole marketing ‘funnel’ (which isn’t really a funnel at all) should be turned upside down, and marketing should focus on the following sequence of events.

  1. Feedback and engagement with customers to find out what will make them more loyal, and what we can do to achieve this.
  2. Reputation and referral building systems.
  3. Once we’ve achieved that, then gather feedback from existing customers, lapsed customers and ‘not yet’ customers on routes to market and why they chose you.
  4. Then, and only then, develop new marketing processes
  5. Start small, test and measure, then build systematically

Most marketing budget and activity is wasted – adverts and logos may look cool to you, but if they don’t generate at least 10x their cost in new business, then they’re probably a waste.

 

Please contact us at support@salesthroughservice.com for our free SHORT eBook on this subject called ‘The 7 Deadly Sins of Sales (and what to do about them)’!

 

 

Your brand is what people say about you behind your back

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Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com probably the most successful retail business of all time, is consistently quoted as saying the above about businesses Brands.

Yet, how much time and effort do businesses often put into feedback and genuinely getting close to the customer versus developing Brands and pretty Logos?

I think the point is clear: in the world of the 21st century empowered customer, transparent business processes and unrestrained online feedback, it is becoming stupider and stupider to spend lots of money on Brands whilst either ignoring or treating feedback and customer engagement as a minor issue in your business.

It is now the other way round.

We are going through a revolution in how people behave and interact with each other: for the first time in history, there is two way global information and the voice of one customer can relatively easily be more powerful than the voice of your entire marketing department.

For example, over a year ago some feedback on a car brand’s service disaster, ranked higher on google for almost four months than the official service website for that car brand. One small lapse of focus, combined with poor feedback systems, produced many hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of damage.

There are many similar examples across the web: please just search for further examples!

In a revolution, everything revolves.

  • Customers get information from reviews and other people’s opinion, rather than your official information
  • Customers can shop on price 24 hours a day rather than wait for your annual sale
  • Sales teams are dealing with customers who know just as much about your competitors as they do about you (and probably more than you do)
  • Customers can access products and services from around the world at the touch of a button at a fraction of the price they used to have to pay
  • And marketing is now not about polishing your brand to make it look as shiny as possible, it’s about genuinely engaging the customer, gathering feedback and investing in customer reputation loyalty and referrals, for long term product and brand success.

Investors in Feedback helps you fill the gap, revolve your systems to drive continual customer reputation, loyalty, cross sales, up sales and referrals.