Effective Marketing Building Block #1 - Have Something Good to Say
Effective Marketing Building Block #1 - Have Something Good to Say
Before spending a dime on any form of marketing, a company first needs to be crystal clear on what makes it worthy of the customer’s business. This may sound like a “messaging” issue but it’s not. At its core, it’s an issue of business and marketing strategy.
So what does it mean to “have something good to say” and how do you get there?
Having something good to say really means that you’ve understood your customer at a very deep level, and have aligned everything about the way you do business to satisfy or exceed the needs and expectations of your customers. This goes well beyond the traditional “features, advantages, benefits” of your products or services. Of course, your products and services must be providing some value to your customers or you wouldn’t still be in business. But to excel, you need to address real client wants and needs in a way that is superior and in some way unique versus your competition. Beyond products and services, real alignment with your customers extends to all facets of your operations: your hours of business, payment terms, return or cancellation policies, customer service and technical support options, even the verbiage and tone of your communications.
So what’s stopping so many companies from being in alignment with their customers? Absolutely nothing. Other than the willingness to ask the right questions, and the willingness to truly hear the customers’ answers. Most customers are delighted to provide you with honest feedback, provided they feel you are sincere in your interest. Repeated “customer satisfaction surveys” that seem to change nothing will dampen any customers enthusiasm for communicating with you. But if you approach them with a sincere desire to learn more about them and how you can serve them better, you’ll be amazed at what they’ll tell you and what you can learn!
The hardest part is to truly HEAR what the customer is saying. We all tend to “hear what we want to hear” and that can be a real problem when asking for customer feedback. Sometimes, they’ll tell you things that you absolutely do NOT WANT to hear – and that is usually the most important feedback of all.
We all enjoy hearing how wonderful our product is and how nice our customer service reps are, but what do you do when you learn that something you’ve based a big part of your business strategy on – is wrong?!?
For instance, you spent the better part of the past decade becoming ISO9001 certified, and you lead with this clear proof of your high quality standards in all your marketing, only to learn that it’s actually fast delivery, a wide range of products, and flexible payment terms that are your customers’ top three buying criteria, with quality a distant fourth? This is not an easy thing to learn, but you’d better learn it sooner rather than later, or you’ll eventually be out of business.
So ask customers what they truly care about, what issues are making their lives a pain, how you could help them better, and how you could be of more service. Then be prepared to truly listen, and most important, be prepared to ACT upon what you hear. Figure out how you can align your business more fully with the needs of your customers and you’re on the way to accelerating growth and greater profitability.
You’ll also truly then “have something good to say” and you’ll be ready for the second building block of effective marketing, which is “saying it well”, the topic of my next post.
Effective Marketing Building Block 1 Have Something Good to Say - To learn more about this author, visit Rich Gaasenbeek's Website.
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It’s amazing how many companies want to launch into a direct mail campaign or trade journal ad campaign without ever really knowing what they want to say. Without knowing what they want to say, they default to generic “boilerplate” communications which is a mixture of platitudes pulled from their dated corporate brochure, with their logo big and bold at the very top. In fact, there’s a direct co-relation between the size and prominence of the company’s logo in its advertising, and the vagueness of its message. The bigger and more prominent the logo, the less clear the company is on its message.
Before spending a dime on any form of marketing, a company first needs to be crystal clear on what makes it worthy of the customer’s business. This may sound like a “messaging” issue but it’s not. At its core, it’s an issue of business and marketing strategy.
So what does it mean to “have something good to say” and how do you get there?
Having something good to say really means that you’ve understood your customer at a very deep level, and have aligned everything about the way you do business to satisfy or exceed the needs and expectations of your customers. This goes well beyond the traditional “features, advantages, benefits” of your products or services. Of course, your products and services must be providing some value to your customers or you wouldn’t still be in business. But to excel, you need to address real client wants and needs in a way that is superior and in some way unique versus your competition. Beyond products and services, real alignment with your customers extends to all facets of your operations: your hours of business, payment terms, return or cancellation policies, customer service and technical support options, even the verbiage and tone of your communications.
So what’s stopping so many companies from being in alignment with their customers? Absolutely nothing. Other than the willingness to ask the right questions, and the willingness to truly hear the customers’ answers. Most customers are delighted to provide you with honest feedback, provided they feel you are sincere in your interest. Repeated “customer satisfaction surveys” that seem to change nothing will dampen any customers enthusiasm for communicating with you. But if you approach them with a sincere desire to learn more about them and how you can serve them better, you’ll be amazed at what they’ll tell you and what you can learn!
The hardest part is to truly HEAR what the customer is saying. We all tend to “hear what we want to hear” and that can be a real problem when asking for customer feedback. Sometimes, they’ll tell you things that you absolutely do NOT WANT to hear – and that is usually the most important feedback of all.
We all enjoy hearing how wonderful our product is and how nice our customer service reps are, but what do you do when you learn that something you’ve based a big part of your business strategy on – is wrong?!?
For instance, you spent the better part of the past decade becoming ISO9001 certified, and you lead with this clear proof of your high quality standards in all your marketing, only to learn that it’s actually fast delivery, a wide range of products, and flexible payment terms that are your customers’ top three buying criteria, with quality a distant fourth? This is not an easy thing to learn, but you’d better learn it sooner rather than later, or you’ll eventually be out of business.
So ask customers what they truly care about, what issues are making their lives a pain, how you could help them better, and how you could be of more service. Then be prepared to truly listen, and most important, be prepared to ACT upon what you hear. Figure out how you can align your business more fully with the needs of your customers and you’re on the way to accelerating growth and greater profitability.
You’ll also truly then “have something good to say” and you’ll be ready for the second building block of effective marketing, which is “saying it well”, the topic of my next post.
Effective Marketing Building Block 1 Have Something Good to Say - To learn more about this author, visit Rich Gaasenbeek's Website.
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John PowerJohn Power, founder of Biltmore Franchise Consulting, has extensive experience developing and marketing franchises and business opportunities. He has been in and around franchising for over twenty years. From 1980 through 1990 he conceptualized, organized, and developed the American Video Association. He grew AVA to 2,000 national members, before selling the company it 1990. It was later merged into another home video marketing company. From 2000 to 2005 he worked as a contract marketing and human resources consultant to several local and national companies. In 2005 Mr. Power began working as a franchise development consultant on a full-time basis. Since that time he has helped more than three dozen companies initiate and develop their franchising program. He notes that there are many companies interested in developing a franchise program, and who need his specialized assistance. Mr. Power is a “hands-on” franchise consultant. He said, “I am the ‘nuts and bolts’ person who tends to the details for my clients.” Mr. Power holds a B.S. degree with a major in Marketing. See: www.biltmorefranchise.com You may contact Mr. Power at: jpower@biltmorefranchise.co - Visit John Power's Website |
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Dave KurlanDave Kurlan is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the industry leader in sales assessments and sales force evaluations, and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in sales force development. Dave has been a top rated speaker at Inc. Magazine's Conference on Growing the Company, the Sales & Marketing Management Conference and the Gazelles Sales & Marketing Summit. He has been featured on radio and TV, including World Business Review with General Norman Schwarzkopf, in Inc. Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine and Incentive Magazine. He is the author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball. He created and wrote STAR, a proprietary recruiting process for hiring great salespeople, and he writes Understanding the Sales Force, a popular business Blog and is a contributing author to The Death of 20th Century Selling and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2. - Visit Dave Kurlan's Website |
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Jeff FosterWebBizIdeas.com is a Minneapolis website design company founded to help people start an internet business by providing them with website, business, and internet resources that help foster the growth of successful online businesses and develop innovative Internet business ideas. We specialize in internet consulting & internet marketing. - Visit Jeff Foster's Website |
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Stephanie RobeyStephanie Robey is President and CoFounder of Pivot Positive, LLC - an Internet marketing business focused on helping people start work at home ventures. Previously, she was employed at The Search Agency with over 20 years experience in graphic design and 10 years experience in online marketing. She was responsible for launching the Conversion Path Optimization (CPO) unit where she and her team have conducted hundreds of optimization tests for online companies across multiple verticals. She is a successful entrepreneur having started and sold 2 companies and remains on the board of directors of the third, PhotoSpin.com Stephanie began her career in the direct marketing realm creating and producing direct mail for many of the major cable television companies and directly attributes her understanding of Internet marketing to those early offline experiences. Stephanie is a graduate of San Diego State University with a BFA in Graphic Arts and also holds an Executive MBA from the Graziadio School of Business and Management at Pepperdine University. Read Steph's Blog Meet Steph and Dave Sign up for our Free 7-Day BootCamp: Self Employed & Rich - Visit Stephanie Robey's Website |
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Joe DagerJoe Dager is President of Business901, a progressive coaching company providing no-nonsense direction in areas such as Lean Six Sigma Marketing and organized referral marketing. What others say: In the past 20 years, Joe and I have collaborated on many difficult issues. Joe’s ability to combine his expertise with “out of the box” thinking is unsurpassed. He has always delivered quickly, cost effectively and with ingenuity. A brilliant mind that is always a pleasure to work with.” - James R. If you want to learn more about Business901, start a conversation with us. We can be found @ Web/Blog: Business901.com Web/Blog: FundingYourNonprofit.com LinkedIn Profile Follow me on Twitter - Visit Joe Dager's Website |
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David AchesonDavid Acheson is the founder of DCJA Consultancy. DCJA Consultancy is a management consultancy business specialising in B2B sales consultancy. They offer bespoke and packaged sales consultancy including Sales Optimisation Review, Interim Sales Management, Sales & Marketing Review, 1:1 Sales & Management Staff Analysis, Management Training, Solution Sales Training, Creation of New Pay Plan, KPI's, run Customer Feedback Campaigns, assist with Recruitment, Coaching, Appraisals and set up Strategic Marketing Campaigns. David spent his early career in accountancy and then moved into sales in 1982, working in Office Equipment, IT, Advertising, Training, Outsourcing and Consultancy. He has held many Senior Positions in SMBs and Global Organisations including Head of Sales Operations & Head of Business Development. His knowledge, skills and great experience of the Sales Industry has led to David making keynote speeches and running educational sessions to key businesses through organisations including The Chamber of Commerce and Business Link. - Visit David Acheson's Website |
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Jay Kubassek(Jay's Full Bio: EvanCarmichael.com/jaykubassek) In five years, Canadian-born entrepreneur Jay Kubassek went from selling mufflers at a Midas franchise to revolutionizing Internet marketing with the 2004 launch of CarbonCopyPRO, a online marketing education company, now worth over $20 million with customers in over 160 countries.
As an independent film producer, his upstart film fund Aliquot Films is currently producing a films with Spike Lee and Abel Fererra (starring Ethan Hawke and Dennis Hopper.)
Jay's entrepreneurial spirit is irrepressible. He’s the owner of five companies, a professional speaker and trainer, international real estate developer/investor, extreme sport enthusiast and emerging philanthropist. Jay resides in NYC with his wife Jamie, son Milo and dog Cooper. Visit Jay's official website: www.JayKubassek.com - Visit Jay Kubassek's Website |
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John AlexanderJohn has taught keyword research and SEO skills to small groups of business owners and Webmasters from over 80 different countries world wide since 2002. John is also the Director of Search Engine Academy ; Co-director of Training at Search Engine Workshops offering live, SEO Workshops with his partner SEO educator Robin Nobles, author of the very first comprehensive online search engine marketing courses at SEO Training Online and the SEO Workshop Resource Center. I look forward to hearing from you! - Visit John Alexander's Website |
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