Communication works for those who work at it
Having great relationships with your customers and quality communications which matches your customers’ needs is crucial to enhancing your company’s brand and reputation. However, if we don’t really know what makes our customers tick or are not communicating with the right customers, there is no point spending a lot of time and money on a communications campaign that isn’t going to appeal to your target group.
So how can a marketer who has more than 15 year’s experience specialising in Product Management in mostly the B2B markets help you as a business clearly differentiate yourselves from your competition. In my experience the following elements are crucial to ensuring your business communicates with the correct target audience.
Strategic planning - By having a clear focus on your market, customers and competitors and a clear awareness of your core business strengths and offering will enable you to determine which direction you want your business to take.
Communications campaign - Customised for your size of company and target market with promotional tools and messages selected to appeal to their needs e.g. direct mail, personal selling, telemarketing, mobile marketing, email and social media could be used to get a more direct audience with customers and allow for immediate response. Integrated marketing campaigns should be implemented to ensure there is a consistent message across all offline and online promotional tools selected.
Market research - Finding more about your customers, the marketplace, industry and products. It is important to know how you are perceived in the marketplace and how well you are satisfying your customers. Survey or other metrics could be used to gather feedback on how you are doing to make sure your customers are happy. Reviewing your existing customers and understanding which ones are the most profitable, which offer the greatest on-going business potential and which are a drain on time, resources and profitability can be very productive and can help develop your target profile for prospects. Examining past bids and tenders can also help develop a more productive approach to the time consuming tender process.
Branding - Developing your company’s branding is an essential part of enhancing your company’s reputation. Branding should convey what is great about your business to create a positive impression on your existing and potential customers, but is it just as important to your relationships with partners and suppliers? Your company name, the way you answer the phone, what your customers say when they’re asked about you all build to create an impression of your company and what it’s like to do business with you. USP’s should also be defined as well as who you are aiming at and how you want to position yourself and it is vital that in all communications the personality of the brand comes across.
In conclusion, being a business doesn’t mean all the focus needs to go into getting new sales, making sure existing customers are fully satisfied is equally important. What you sell is all about your product and services and what you market is all about your customers. This is why marketing is vital to helping you develop new customers and maintain existing ones.
If you are a business looking for support and advice and would like me to drop by for a chat to see how my marketing experience can help you then please get in touch.
Tel: 07557 040 830 or e-mail: [email protected]
Many thanks for reading.
Clare