Efficiency is key to sustainability.
Avoid common mistakes.
If you haven’t thought about where your next customer is coming from you may be risking your business on out-dated hunches. The only assumption a small business needs to make is that its audience knows what its options are and you need to be keeping them happy like there’s no tomorrow. When battles are fought just keeping your head above the commoditization of your products you become a marketer whether you own that badge or not. Like everything else in your business, efficiency is key to sustainability. Learn how you can improve the efficiency of common marketing tactics. Find out how doing so will keep your customers content, fend off competitive attacks and convert more new prospects to leads.
It’s very likely that even your best customers have to find ways to thwart daily overtures from your competition. Is it not your responsibility to make it easier for your client to defend their loyalty to you? This is why they want more than just your best price. At the very least, your clients need help advocating for you—both internally and externally. Having a strong personal relationship with clients is hard to beat but what if your close personal contact is suddenly out of the picture? When the playing field is suddenly leveled how are you going to look to a new manager who comes to the fore with no loyalty to your company whatsoever?
Small industrial businesses believe they are somehow immune to some of the rules of business and marketing. When I have challenged business managers about some of these principles the common response is “we’ve not done it that way in the past.” I think, well, at least he’s listening.
Business-to-business marketers are an impatient lot when it comes to marketing execution primarily because they see it only as an expense. The sooner they can get something done, the lesser the pain and, the lesser the expense, they believe. But ineffectiveness is so inefficient. They put up their website and expect people to come. They send out literature and expect to change someone’s mind. Or they send an email blast and expect us to remember them in the morning. If you or any of your sales or marketing staff believes any of these tactics are worth your time or money, reel them in, step back together, and get a grip on reality.
Here is why three of your most common marketing tactics may be inefficient:
Your website is your most powerful marketing tool.
Does yours look and feel like a static online brochure or does it engage people with takeaways and in return, serve you as a lead generation tool? Are you talking at your visitors or is the material presented in a friendly conversational style? Have you regularly added new content every couple of months? Do you have a way for prospects to follow up from any point in the buying process? Some are ready now, some just want to kick some tires. They’re at your doorstep, what are you going to give them?
Literature does well to support your message.
But don’t expect your sales kit to bring the business to your door. The goal of your marketing message should be to change someone’s behavior—cause them to do something they would not have done otherwise. Don’t just show them pretty pictures and list your features and benefits, offer a free a test drive, ask them to look at a sample. Then, if they like it, they might change their mind later.
Use email to show how much you respect your prospect.
Respect their time, respect who they are and respect what is relevant to them. Email is a very effective way to nurture a prospect to your corner. For the sake of efficiency keep a single but segmented database for both prospects and customers. You have to be able to identify your most important contacts to give them the special handling they deserve. By all means, never “blast” an email message to a group of prospects. Instead, send carefully targeted messages for maximum impact:
- Content that adds to or follows up a previous conversation
- Answers to questions or offer more information
- Content that is time sensitive and relevant
- Content that relates to their problems, interest or industry
- Other targeted messages that deliver content based on the recipient’s role interest or identifiable need
The last word. What’s even more efficient is the value you create in the process of communicating effectively. This differentiation will enable customers to justify spending more. All you have to achieve is the perception of being the better choice. If competitors cannot match it, you can hold your prices higher longer. Let me know if I can help with specific issues we couldn’t address in this post.