Why spend time marketing our businesses?

Is this you? You’re so busy spinning the various plates you need to run your own business; you barely have time for your business. One of these plates may be marketing and, in this newsletter, we cover some points which will help you save both time and money.

Here’s a question: Would you embark on a journey to a new destination without checking where you’re going and how long it will take?

When it comes to marketing your business it’s pretty much the same. Your business is on a journey and, by taking some time out to plan at the outset, you should find your route to meeting your business goals smoother and even quicker. Importantly, you’ll also find you spend less time and money on trial and error, which leads many to believe that ‘marketing doesn’t work’.

Let’s start with the basics: What is Marketing?

One of the common misconceptions is that marketing is all about advertising or selling. Whilst these are components, real marketing is about knowing what your customers’ or clients’ needs are and fulfilling these needs. ?However, marketing is not an isolated function. It should be seen as a philosophy that guides your whole business. Ultimately the goal of marketing is to create customer satisfaction profitably by building valued relationships with your customers or clients. And this needs to be embedded throughout your business. It’s not a stand-alone add on or something to think about further down the line. If you can integrate the philosophy of marketing into your business’ DNA now, you’ll find you need to spend less time planning and more time on your core business.

Marketing works by influencing a customer or client to take action. It’s all about getting the right message in front of the right people at the right time. But how?

Firstly, identify your target market

This is key. Without understanding who your market is, how can you reach them? So, it’s worth spending a bit of time upfront segmenting your market – breaking it down into groups of similar like-minded individuals and finding your most profitable market segment, your ‘best fit customers’. You may well have a broad target market and that’s okay. But, for marketing, it’s advisable to segment to hone and target communications. And it’s important that each target market is identified clearly at the outset of any communication or marketing campaign to make sure you’re speaking to that particular group. This way you can ensure your messages resonate and motivate, ultimately leading to action.

Next determine its needs or wants when it comes to your product or service

If you can find out what your target market’s needs and wants are (ie their problem) and ensure you’re supplying the solution, you will be well on the way to getting them to buy your product or service. This is where many businesses come unstuck and why many marketing campaigns don’t see results. The reason is we don’t always talk about our product and services in a way that our customers or clients can relate to. We don’t clarify our messages and we don’t show how our product or service will help our customers or clients innate and fundamental human need to survive. ?Think Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. We cover this in more detail in our series of articles ‘Getting to know your Customers or Clients’ which can be found on our website here And we don’t pass the ‘grunt test’ as articulated by Donald Miller in his brilliant book ‘Building a Brand Story’ – a highly recommended read. He puts it very simply. There are three questions our customers or clients need to be able to answer within five seconds of looking at our website or marketing material:

?1.????? What do you offer?

2.????? How will it make my life better?

3.????? What do I need to do to buy it?

We also need to be aware that there are three levels to our customers’ or clients’ problems, Miller breaks these down into:

?·??????? External Problems

·??????? Internal Problems

·??????? Philosophical Problems

And we need to address all three in our communications. We’ll delve more deeply into this in future newsletters. But if you would like to know more now, please do give us a call. We’ll happily explain and don’t worry – we won’t try to sell ourselves to you!

Next you need to ensure you’re speaking their language

Here you need to show you understand your customers’ or clients’ ‘problem’ and that you can provide the ‘solution’ in a way they understand. ?And it may sound obvious but say it in a way that they’ll understand. It’s easy to get caught up in acronyms and sector-speak. We may think, by using these, we sound more informed and knowledgeable but, unless these are universally understood, it’s best to steer clear and relay your messages in ‘consumer-speak’.

And lastly, where and when should you speak to them?

Where: The answer is where your target market is and when it’s likely it will be receptive to your messaging and go on to take action. Sadly, it’s unlikely your customers or clients will come directly to you without prompting, so you need to find out where they hang out. Once you’ve established this, communicate, advertise or post there.

Are they on social media and, if so, which platform? Maybe your target market doesn’t use social media – it is possible! It’s also important to determine how your target market consumes media on each channel. For example, they may be on social media for ‘social’ reasons (seeing photos of their friends and family) and may find ‘business’ messages intrusive (especially paid ‘sponsored’ posts). ?Where else can you reach them? It’s helpful to break our communication channels into three:

· Paid (advertising)

· Earned (PR/shares on social media etc.)

· Owned (website/intranet/newletters etc.)

And don’t forget about traditional media such as print ads and editorial, radio and TV ads and billboards, for example. These tend to be overlooked in favour of social or digital media and viewed as more expensive. Remember, marketing is an investment; it only becomes an expense if it doesn’t deliver results!

Local media can also be extremely effective. Do you have a local radio station or free local magazine in which you can advertise? These tend to be reasonably priced and economically effective as you would be positioning yourself as a ‘local business’ which can generate trust. People also like to show support for their communities.

However, we need to be realistic. Taking out a one-off full-page ad in your local or relevant trade magazine, whilst raising brand awareness, may not necessarily drive sales. You need consistent presence. If monthly is too cost prohibitive, try bi-monthly or quarterly. It’s a given within the marketing and advertising world that consumers need to see a message or advertisement at least three times before it starts to resonate - ?‘opportunities to see’ (OTS). The same is true with ‘opportunities to hear’ (OTH). And please don't expect to see overnight results - it takes time for a marketing campaign to bed in.

That’s why, at MW Marketing Solutions, we always recommend an integrated marketing campaign which is designed to support the marketing strategy. A one-off, ad hoc advertisement is unlikely to be effective and more likely to be a waste of your marketing budget. It’s also likely to make your accountant twitchy as you won’t see a ‘return on investment’!

Now let’s look at the ‘when’. When will your customer or client be receptive to your messages? For this we can look at and map our customers’ journeys against the various touchpoints. One of the simplest ways to do this is to use the AIDA model (acronym for Attention, Interest, Desire, Action) developed back in 1898 by Elias St. Elmo Lewis but still holds true today. We can add retention and advocacy at the end to reflect the true customer value.

This really is a whistle-stop tour. We hope it helps a bit with the plate spinning and explains why we should spend time upfront on marketing. However, if you’d like more information or if my agency can help in any way please do get in touch.

If you found this useful, please do sign up to receive future newsletters. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be looking at getting to know your customers (how you define your audience; what you need to say; how you should say it; and where and when you should say it in order to drive sales).

Have a great week. If you have a particular topic you’d like us to cover in future editions, please let us know. We’d love to hear from you.

Best wishes,

Marie Wimlett

Founder of MW Marketing Solutions

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