A = Audience

Everything in marketing begins with your customer.  What problem are you trying to solve for them?  Who are you trying to sell to?  What do you know about them?  What motivates them and what would encourage them to buy?

The more you know about your customers, the easier your job becomes.  So do your homework – this isn’t a section on which you should be relying on guesswork.

B = Brilliant Marketing

OK…I had to make it fit my ABC!  Your marketing mix is the step between working out who your audience is and deciding how you will reach them and with what messages.  This brings into play your product benefits, your pricing, your promotion and your distribution strategies and it flows from the information you know about your customers.

Ideally, you should have products that solve problems for your chosen audience, pricing that will be attractive to your prospects, your products/services available in places your audience shops and promotion in things they see or read using messages that are relevant to them.

C = Conversion

There is no point to marketing unless you’re converting sales… and this is the bit many marketers forget or wimp out on.  But if your actions aren’t leading to profit, someone should be questioning them.

A good friend of mine once told me that marketing is what you do to get the phone to ring and sales is what happens when you pick up the phone and it’s a great distinction.  And you need both elements to have a successful company.

So there you have it…the ABC of marketing.

I look forward to receiving your feedback and comments.

You don’t ask them any questions.  You might record their telephone number.  And, worst case scenario you lose the scrap of paper containing their details over the coming weeks.

Whatever the reason (or excuse) you don’t follow-up.

What if they haven’t received the brochure (trust me, it happens on a frighteningly regular basis)?  What if they’re interested and are waiting for you to call?

It isn’t the customers job to remember to do business with you – it’s your job

Most customers take on average seven points of contact before they buy.  And most sales people give up at 5 points.  What’s even more scary is the number of businesses who don’t follow-up at all – despite the fact that it’s free marketing!

So what is best practice with follow-ups and how can you really make the most of incoming enquiries?  Here are our top 5 tips (most of which are free or cheap to implement and could be done very quickly):

1. If a customer calls, have a script to follow and find out as much information as you can
2. Gain permission to follow that person up and ensure they received the information they wanted
3. Answer enquiries promptly – be available by phone and email and respond where possible within 24 hours
4. Record all the information you take in a database (ideally customer relationship management – CRM – software)
5. Diary a follow-up and stick to it (and then diary another)

If people take time out of their busy lives to enquire about your product, they’re paying you a huge compliment.  The least you can do is treat that compliment with respect and try to help the customer towards a solution.

1. Be Honest.  The trend towards Corporate Social Responsibility looks set to continue – which is great in my book.  Consumers are demanding more transparency and honesty and, as a result, more customers are shopping locally again and using suppliers they trust.
2. Mobile Internet.  Teenagers are increasingly using mobile internet, rather than fixed line broadband.  This trend looks set to continue with the increase in mobile phone technology and, if you’re targeting teenagers, it’s something you need to be aware of now.
3. Niche Markets.  In marketing, we used to work off Pareto’s principle – 20% of your customers typically brought you 80% of your business, so you would focus on what that 20% wanted.  But the internet is changing the rules and giving people an endless choice.  As a result, niche marketing can now prove very profitable – particularly since you can tap into niche’s worldwide at the tap of a button.
4. Self Employment.  Throughout last year, many companies down-sized and made people redundant.  Consequently, business start-ups are increasing, as people choose to take their fate into their own hands.  The growing number of start-ups will provide endless opportunities for some companies.
5. Wellness.  Baby Boomers remain a significant proportion of our economy and they have always driven trends.  Now approaching retirement age, they don’t want to grow old and they don’t want to end up in care (as they’ve seen their parents do.)  They are therefore driving a ‘wellness’ revolution for anti-ageing, exercise classes, cosmetic surgery etc. to keep them young.

Check back tomorrow for another 5 trends to watch this year.

You will no doubt have heard the phrase ‘it costs 7 times more to find a new customer as it does to keep an existing one.’  But how many of us take that to heart?

Do you keep a record of the people who buy from you?

If so, do you use that information?

If not, you have an untapped pool that you can use for marketing – and it’s much cheaper than running an advertising campaign, or trying to attract new people.  And your returns will be much higher.

Here are just a few ideas of how you could use that data -to benefit you and your customers

• Send details of special offers
• Create a loyalty club
• Offer vouchers
• Send birthday / Christmas cards
• Run competitions
• Give customers useful information
• Invite people to events that might interest them

The key to keeping in touch is sending things that are relevant, interesting and of benefit to your customers… more on that tomorrow.

But, do you know who’s recommending you?  If you aren’t measuring where your customers are coming from, you can’t be sure – and you can’t thank the person doing the recommending.

Do you think that if someone recommending your company received a ‘thank you’ from you, they might recommend you again?

Could you also perhaps incentivise people to recommend your company, providing they are happy to do so?

This is how business has been done from the very beginning – if you are looking for a plumber, you’re likely to ask your friends who they know, rather than call someone cold (and risk them letting you down).  If they know they’ve been recommended, they’re likely to do an even better job, as they don’t want to let two people down.

If you could increase you referrals by just 10% in 2010, what difference would that make to your business – and profit margin?

This week is a series of the most cost-effective techniques we use with our consultancy customers – I hope you find them useful for you in achieving your goals in 2010.

They include:

• Customer Retention Tips
• Re-connecting with Prospects
• Maximising your Word of Mouth Marketing

You can achieve most of these without spending very much money – and your returns will be higher than many other forms of marketing.

At the end of the advert, they no longer quote their website, but ask people to ‘search for Dyson online’.  No doubt I should have seen that one coming and it’s a very interesting change.  If customers and prospects type ‘Dyson’ into Google, they will receive all sorts of information – both good and bad – about Dyson.  And that’s much more useful to a prospect than the companies own website.

It allows them to read reviews, testimonials, complaints and get a very honest impression of the company and their products.  And, honest is a key word in that sentance – if the internet can be used as a tool for keeping companies honest and actively suggesting prospects read up on their credentials and check them out, that can only bode well for the consumer – and it keeps our industry more ethical.

Of course, the companies that already lack scruples will be pushing their own ‘independent’ reviews into the online space – but it becomes more difficult to hide the people who don’t like them – especially if they’re numerous.  (If you doubt customer power, just look at ‘you broke my guitar’ and see what happened to United Airlines when they refused to take one disgrtuntled customer seriously.)

The marketing world’s a much more interesting space now customers can talk back!

That very simple up-sell generated 90p extra per person; an additional £1.80 on our order. The cafe sat 28 people – even if only 25% of customers accepted the upsell that’s an additonal £6.30 every time the tables are turned.  Do that just once a day and you make an additional £189 per month and over £2000 in a year. 

We spoke to the owner at the end of the meal and he told us that almost everybody accepts the up-sell, so his figures will be much higher than those in the example above.  He also told us that Caernarfon was heaving in the summer, so they probebly turn their tables at least four times a day – not bad, for the sake of a simple sentance.

What could you ask in your business that could generate an extra 90p per sale?

Thanks to J&C’s for the example above – if you ever find yourself in Caernarfon, we can highly recommend the fish and chips – and the mushy peas!

1. Failure to focus on a specific market because of poor research
2. Failure to control cash
3. Failure to control costs
4. Failure to adapt your product to meet customer needs
5. Failure to carry out decent market research
6. Failure to build a team that is compatible and has the skills to finance, produce, sell and market
7. Failure to pay taxes
8. Failure to try and grow
9. Failure to gain new markets
10. Under-capitalisation

No less than 50% of these reasons relate to marketing (and I would argue number 6 could also be included as marketing, from an internal point of view).  It makes sense to me, as I know how powerful marketing can be at boosting profits and helping companies grow.  But, if you’re not using marketing to its full potential, now would be a great time to start.

One of the key things we look for is strengths and weaknesses – often your competitors have different strengths to you and, by understanding that, you can focus on the things you do well and create some meaningful unqiue selling points for your business.

When you’re researching your competitors, there are a few common mistakes to avoid:

1. Hiding Your Identity.

Whilst this was a well-used (and fun) way to capture competitor information, there are now certain laws that protect companies from this.  It’s much better to ask a customer to call, or contact the owners yourself and agree to meet and share information that could benefit you both.

2. Copying Your Competitors.

This is a common trap business owners fall into, because they see a competitor doing something they aren’t – and they don’t want to be left behind.  But, beware – unless you know their marketing is better than yours, and producing a great return on investment, why assume they know something you don’t?

3. Dissing The Competition.

If you only research your competitors in order to tell customers how bad they really are, then please don’t waste your time.  You will only serve to destroy your credibility, as noone likes the kid that tells tales on their friends.  This is a very basic rule of marketing, but I never cease to be amazed by the amount of companies who ignore it.

James Dyson put it into perspective in his autobiography when he commented that comparing yourself to your competitors in a public arena only serves to promote them – using your own money.  And why would you want to do that?

4. Treating Competitors Any Differently to Prospects

Your closest competitors can often be your very best allies, and can also be a potential source of business, so we recommend building a relationship with them if you can.  You often find you both have expertise in different areas and can work together to provide more value to customers than you could on your own.

For example, if you run a hotel, would you rather turn a guest away when you’re full and let them look for a competitor on their own.  Or could you suggest somewhere they could try, that you know will offer a similar level of service to you?

In some industries, I appreciate this is very difficult.  They may be very traditional and extremely competitive, but working together at some level may be worth a try – it’s definitely the best way to do business.