PARELA - The Smart Marketing System

Most start-ups, micro, small and medium sized businesses don't do the marketing basics well ... if at all ... which is partly why only one in ten start-ups reach their first birthday.

Yet small businesses, employing fewer than 250 people, are the backbone of every modern economy, accounting for over 99% of all business transactions.

PARELA is a simple, stepwise marketing system created by digital marketing and business development consultant Mark Walmsley.

It is designed to help businesses refresh their marketing strategy, focus on "brilliant basics" and achieve more with their finite marketing budgets.

Below you will find an introduction to PARELA and a free checklist.

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PARELA is an acronym for the chronological stages of customer engagement:

1. Proposition
2. Awareness
3. Recall
4. Engagement
5. Loyalty
6. Advocacy

To achieve stability, profitability and growth, every business must lead increasing numbers of new customers from unawareness to engagement and the marketing “holy grail” of advocacy, where brands like Apple, Nike and Harley Davidson have reached.

Most businesses get stuck at one of these stages and it is almost always at 1, 2 or 3.

This introduction and free stepwise checklist explain what can be done to achieve and pass each stage and expert support is available to show you how, or to manage the process if required. 

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Proposition

“If you’re not different, you’re invisible.”

The first stage of the PARELA system is to review and/or create your unique customer proposition.

Most small businesses do not communicate what makes them different, and better than the competition. Many don’t even know this themselves.

Businesses that offer inferior products or services don’t tend to offer long term competition. Those that do must compete on differentiation and remarkability and not solely on their ability to solve the problem effectively.

When you start to attract or reach out to prospective new customers they must be made immediately aware what you are, what you offer, what problem your service or product solves, and why you are different, and better than the competition. It is called perception engineering.

“If you can’t be first in your category, create a new category.”

Tasks:

Research 5 competitors in the role of a prospective customer. Learn what they offer and how they describe themselves. What tone do they adopt? What do they claim makes them different and better? What can you learn from this?

Review your own service or product offering and establish what makes you - or could make you - different, better and remarkable when compared to your target audience.

For example: Shoe brand Zappos offer every new starter $2,000 in cash to leave, after 2 weeks. It has made them famous and remarkable but has nothing to do with their products.

Write your brand promise using the following template:

For (your target customers), only (your brand or business) can deliver (the solution), because only (your brand or business) can (your unique proposition).

Apply these points of differentiation and remarkability to all of your marketing assets, copy and marketing channels before you move on.

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Awareness

“The single biggest marketing challenge faced by most businesses is that their prospective new customers simply don’t know they exist.”

The UK Association of Small Businesses cites 6 main reasons for business failure:

1.    Lack of market research

2.    No business plan

3.    Insufficient financing

4.     Poor location, online presence and/or marketing

5.    Poor response to market changes

6.    Expanding too fast

PARELA is designed to help with reason #4 by creating awareness for your new proposition.

Tasks:

Consider what percentage of your target audience is aware of your business, product or service. (Most find that it is below 3%)

Consider conducting an awareness survey offering a prize draw. This should be conducted in partnership with a publisher that can reach your target audience.

Make it unprompted. E.g. “Please name 5 wholesale suppliers of tartan fabric in the UK”. 

Make the 2nd question prompted: “Have you heard of (your company name)?”

You will then have a benchmark for unprompted and prompted awareness against which you can measure awareness again in 12 months’ time.

Decide what marketing assets you have, and will need, and what channels (owned, paid and otherwise) your target audience is using, and then implement a content marketing and awareness development programme that includes an introduction to your product or service and its benefits.

Create and start networking more, in professional social media channels.

Capture customer data and permissions by offering access to valuable original content (e.g. white papers and "How To" guides) in return for contact details.

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Recall

“The second marketing challenge faced by businesses is that their prospective new customers can’t recall them when they are needed.”

If you believe you have created improved levels of awareness but still have low levels of engagement, you may find that your prospective customers are being allowed to forget you.

We can all sympathise with this as most of us have been on the other end of this lack of recall. For example, that great looking restaurant you can’t remember when you are heading out to dinner or that book you intended to buy.

This growing initial awareness must be maintained, especially if the sales cycle for your product or service is a long one, or if your product or service requires a large financial commitment.

The most cost-effective way of maintaining recall is by email.

Tasks:

If you haven't done so already, add your prospect data to a database, low-cost email distribution system or CRM (Customer Relationship Management system). You will find plenty of initial contacts in email programmes and social media accounts.

Write or commission a steady stream of relevant original content and make it available on your website and/or blog via a landing page that requires free registration. (LinkedIn should also be considered).

Start sending out a monthly newsletter providing links to this content and reminding them about your products or services and its unique benefits. I am constantly amazed at how few small businesses do this when email offers the best ROI.

Set reminders to reach out directly and personally to particularly promising contacts on a 30, 60 and then rolling 90-day basis.

Include phone calls in your recall maintenance process. It's under-rated. If you have to leave a voicemail message, do so, and follow it up with an email mentioning it. It is much more likely to be opened and read.

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Engagement

“If your customer thinks it’s broken … it’s broken.”

So, you’ve started to create awareness for your new proposition and you are maintaining prospective customers’ ability to recall you when they have a need.

However, your levels of engagement or financial transactions are not increasing.

The PARELA system has already eliminated lack of awareness, understanding and recall as causes.

There must be other reasons why prospects are deciding not to engage with your business.

In most cases these are related to price, quality, service, risk and/or speed.

Tasks:

Study your main competitors and find out how your prices compare. You may have to pose as a prospective customer to learn this. 

If you are among the least expensive and still not achieving increased engagement, then the barrier is not price. If you are the most expensive then you should review your pricing structure.

If it isn’t price, then look at quality. Study how your competitors communicate this and find ways of reassuring prospective customers about the quality of your products or services. Use quality-related testimonials, accreditation and trade association membership where possible. 

Address problems with perceived level of customer service in a similar way and add a client log in section and/or live chat feature to your website.

Your prospects may be failing to engage for reasons of perceived comparative risk. As the saying goes, 

“No one ever got fired for hiring IBM”.

If you are a small team and/or you aren’t the market leader in your industry it may be that prospects are nervous about engaging with a new and perhaps smaller provider, regardless of the costs involved. 

Address this with reassuring content on your website and in email newsletters. Testimonials, and video testimonials in particular, are valuable here. Drive home your increased flexibility and responsiveness as a small business with customer service front and centre.

If you are a B2C business and/or in retail, back up your promises with money back guarantees etc.

If you don’t believe it is any of the above, it may be speed, the perception that you will be unable to deliver in the required timeframe. If this isn’t a realistic reservation, make that clearer in your copy and offer tangible guarantees.

If you can’t confirm that is any of the above, then ask your customers.

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Loyalty

“Repeat business is the most profitable business you can do.”

So, you’ve achieved growing levels of engagement through your revised customer proposition, increased awareness and recall, and a review of your pricing, quality and service levels.

However, your customers are not coming back, and you need more loyalty. Increased engagement indicates that all is now well with price, quality, choice, service levels etc, so why not?

Of course, some businesses lend themselves to repeat business better than others.

Tasks:

If your business does not lend itself to repeat business, there is little you can do. Alternatively, consider an incentivised referral programme to find new customers through existing ones.

If it does, then devise ways to incentivise repeat business through loyalty schemes and subscription models. 

In some industries service businesses are placed on a retainer in return for lower rates. Contractual repeat business is even better. Aim for that if you can.

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Advocacy

“Apple could double the cost of Macs, halve their marketing budget and still have a viable business model. Few other businesses could.”

Congratulations! You have a stable profitable and growing business with a steady stream of new customers who come back again and again.

To be able to increase profits by increasing prices and/or reducing marketing spend you need advocates to do some of the marketing work for you.

Tasks:

Identify your super peers.

Super peers are customers who spend disproportionately more than others and/or are responsible for bringing new customers to your business.

They are all around us. In every restaurant for example. Few people dine alone and not everyone can have made the decision about where to eat. There is a super peer at every table.

On group holidays and at concerts for example, valuable group booking decisions are made by the super peers

Make a huge fuss of your super peers. Invite them to exclusive events, provide them with vouchers to share, enrol them on affiliate programmes.

? 2018 Mark Walmsley ([email protected])