Most
businesses not meeting their growth objectives are
making one or more of these 12 mistakes...
Mistake #1: Failing To Have A
Marketing Plan...
The first mistake a business
will make is not having a marketing plan. Most
businesses have a marketing treatise, but not a plan.
Their marketing plan is created
once, consulted rarely, and never becomes part of a
working document.
But if the plan that drives
growth isn't part of weekly management, how will it be
reached?
A marketing plan is not a document that sits on a shelf.
It sits on the desk, and gets opened daily, or at least
weekly.
This is what's in a Strategy and
Action marketing plan...
1. A summary of your market
research findings
2. A summary of your competitor research findings
3. A summary of your SWOT analysis
4. Key issues arising from all of these that chart the
big picture
5. The Unique Selling Proposition or core market focus,
around which all company activities can be judged
6. A budget with projected sales, projected expenses, on
a monthly basis, for the next 5 years
7. Last month's actual incomes and expenses
8. Every month's new-customer acquisition activities for
the next 5 years
9. Every month's existing-customer retention activities
for the next 5 years
10. A list of the key staff and their responsibilities
within this 5 year plan
11. Minutes from the weekly meetings that drive this
plan
If you're thinking this
marketing plan mustn't look like a spiral-bound
document, you're right.
It's more likely to be a light folder of core material,
but growing in weekly minutes.
Importantly, it will contain
what you know of the situation your business is in,
where you're going, and how you're faring in getting
there.
...It's a navigation tool.
Mistake #2: Failing To Focus On
The Right Customer...
Failing to focus on the right
customer is surprisingly common because it's both a
strategic issue and an execution issue.
Strategy
Three questions...
Do you know who your most
profitable, available and contactable potential
customers are? Do you actively source these customers in
preference to others? Do you ensure your staff do the
same?
It's possible to increase
business by merely selecting certain targets and
deselecting others.
Rank your customers from top to bottom in terms of their
cumulative value to you.
Then profile your top 20% by
demographics (like age, sex, occupation and location)
and business factors (industry, employees, turnover,
products and services required).
Chances are these top 20%, when
profiled, are a map of the people you should be
targeting.
Profile the bottom 20% and you probably have the
opposite... the profile of customer not to target if the
time and resources spent doing so are at the expense of
your top 20% profile.
Execution
Even when you're consciously
choosing to target certain customers, it's very common
not to reflect this in the marketing support material,
like brochures, letters, websites and advertising.
Do not worry if you fail to appeal to the wrong people
because you have adequately targeted the right people.
There are 3 executions to
re-evaluate from this perspective...
1. Headlines
Make sure they target your top 20% profile, and the
needs and language of that profile.
2. Website Homepage
These days, your homepage is your retail front and
Yellow Pages listing rolled up into one critically
important reference. Make sure it targets the right
people
3. Offers
Your offers are the instrument of response-generation.
These must be appeals that work to gain your chosen
profile.
...Focus on the right customer
and the same expenditure can yield more revenue per
dollar.
Mistake #3: Failing To Know Your
Customer's Needs...
Our own estimate suggests that
only about 20% of businesses have an adequate
understanding of their customers' needs.
So despite your knowledge and
success to-date, there's a one in five chance that you
do not know enough about three aspects of your
customers... their likes, their dislikes and their unmet
wish-list.
But you're in good company...
the other three in every five!
There are two reasons why
businesses fail to understand their customers' needs...
1. They assume that transacting
with customers is enough to gain an understanding of
them, and that the very transaction itself is proof of
an understanding.
2. They assume that their customers are not changing, or
that competitors aren't changing.
Both of these are wrong.
There are two ways to
investigate your customers... Qualitative research and
Quantitative research.
Qualitative research is where
you interview them, and your questions are open-ended,
allowing deeper and varying answers. These interviews
give you depth, but it's difficult and time-consuming,
so you tend not to get a lot of people through this
style of research.
Quantitative research is about
surveys. You structure your questions around options,
lists, rankings and other ways of giving limited
choices.
It forces your customers to
decide from answers that are meaningful to you.
It's easier to get a lot of
people through this style of research. You get more
breadth and less depth.
There are three aspects of your
customers to proactively investigate.
Likes... Find out what your
customers like about you, your product or service,
transacting with you, and what they like about your
competitors.
Dislikes... Obviously what they
do not like about you and your competitors.
Unmet wish list... The things
that they wish a company like yours would do or offer,
but which nobody is doing or offering.
When you know these, you'll
virtually have a blueprint to getting and keeping
customers.
Mistake #4: Failing To Have A
Clear Unique Selling Proposition...
A USP is a powerful marketing
asset, but first let's define it.
A slogan is a catchy phrase that
attempts to position a company. A USP is different
because it makes, or implies, a real proposition... it
invites action. What's more, it attempts to sell in that
suggestion. And further still, it attempts to be unique,
different from any other slogan, offer or positioning.
In other words more, it is a
unique selling proposition.
There are universally accepted
examples of well-conceived USPs...
"Absolutely positively
overnight" from Fedex
"Fresh, hot pizza in 30 minutes or it's free" by Dominos
"Melts in your mouth, not in your hand" by M&Ms
A good USP is a powerful
instrument both internally and externally...
Externally
1. A USP makes a great headline.
2. A USP replaces a slogan with something more
sales-directed
3. A USP gives your sales team a core offer and
positioning to repeat and focus on in their meetings
with prospects.
4. A USP can be executed in any medium... websites,
letters, emails, ads, displays, radio, TV, and more.
Internally
1. A USP becomes the central KPI
to which all aspects of the business can be evaluated.
2. A USP becomes a significant ingredient in the focus
and content of position descriptions.
3. A USP makes a great addition to your mission and
vision.
There are steps to deriving a good USP, and they're
important to get right. Call us to talk about them in
detail, but in brief they are...
1. Research your market and competitors
2. Conduct a SWOT analysis
3. Identify all key issues resulting from these
4. Derive the ingredients of a USP
5. Word-smith the USP
6. Test the USP
It's an old concept, a difficult
one to get right... but a USP is a powerful tool.
Mistake #5: Failing To Test Your
Idea First...
A golden rule to apply to your
marketing efforts is this...
"Never spend on an untested idea
what you can't afford to lose"
That simple advice often gets
ignored.
Reckless spending on ideas that
seem right but are flawed in ways not immediately
apparent is a prime waster of time, money and
opportunity.
Testing on a sample of
prospects, or in a small ad first, or with a few sales
staff only... avoids such losses.
What can be tested?
Everything can be tested, but
the main things to test are these...
Are you targeting the right
prospects? Try targeting different prospects.
Are you using the right headline? Try alternative
headlines and see which works best.
Are you using the right offer and call-to-action?
Experiment and record which offers work with which
targets.
Are you approaching through the right media? Perhaps
your targets are better approached by letter,
advertising, telemarketing or email.
Other than these factors,
everything really can be tested... copywriting details,
colours, formats of brochures, methods of postage and so
on.
Importantly, you should only
test one variable at a time. Testing more than one will
render your experiment difficult to learn from... which
variable changed the result?
Fear
Fear of testing is
understandable, since it consumes time and money, but
the gains and savings are significant.
You don't know what your
marketing is capable of achieving unless you experiment.
A valuable marketing process could be lying undiscovered
in your business.
And you save wasted monies by
testing small, first.
Accumulate a log of what works
and what doesn't. Grow your arsenal of proven methods,
words, pitches and procedures.
Testing discovers better ways
and avoids unnecessary losses.
Mistake #6: Failing To Make An
Explicit Offer...
A lot of ads, letters and
brochures fail to make a real offer.
An offer is simple... It
promises some kind of explicit benefit.
The best place for an offer is
in the headline. Headlines are 80% of the effectiveness
of the letter, brochure, website or ad that contains
them.
There are four styles of
headline, all of which work...
News announcements
News-style alerts have good
readership. You can phrase a good headline in a news
style and it will have good impact.
For instance...
As Reviewed In Courier Mail and
The Australian: "Self-Funding" Metro Inn Apartments so
secure and profitable they literally cost investors
nothing to own
Curiosity- evoking
These headlines arouse curiosity
and often start with the word 'How'. They ask a question
or suggest something, and open up the reader's mind to
enquire for the answer.
For instance...
Can You answer 'Yes' To These 4
Healthy Home Questions?
Self-interest promises
These appeal to pure self-interest on the part of the
reader. It shamelessly speaks in 'what's in it for me'
language.
For instance...
This Is Your View Eating
Breakfast At Aanuka Beach Resort, While... You Are
Enjoying Your Annual 2 Weeks Stay At A Massive 80%
Discount And A Few Metres Away Your Villa Is Making You
A Huge 8.5% Net Return
Quick benefit promises
These suggest something quick
and easy... a no-brainer for something beneficial and
gained without trouble or too much commitment
For instance...
Everything you need to know
about buying or selling motels, management rights,
caravan parks and hotels
All of these headlines worked
well. Make sure your marketing makes an offer.
Mistake #7: Failing To Justify
Your Offer...
This warrants a separate mention
from the importance of making any offer at all.
Having a great offer can attract attention and convert
browsers into readers.
But if an offer seems too good
to be true, it may not be acted upon...
...Unless you can justify it.
It's critically important to
explain a little of the science behind why a terrific
offer is:
1. Able to be made
2. Being made to 'me' the reader
3. Time-expired (valid only until a certain date)
Let's look at these three
components of 'believability...
Why this?
If you have an aspect of your
product, service or business and operational processes
that is unique, and it enables you to achieve something
superior to your competition, explain it.
Revealing this detail will lend credibility to your
offer.
Why me?
Explain - or conceive a
believable explanation for - why you are targeting them,
and why they have received your offer. Were they most
like another customer who has benefits? Are they members
of an association or category that entitles them to
something?
Why now?
Having a time-expiry on your
offer is a way of getting action secured before your
prospect forgets.
But justify the time expiry with
a less you-focused reason.
Perhaps you have limited stock
of the product being offered. Perhaps your diary
suggests certain times, only, are available at the
moment.
Have, or develop, a plausible
reason why the offer has a very real expiry date.
Mistake #8: Failing To Educate
Your Customers...
This is one of the most commonly
occurring mistakes we see, particularly in companies
that sell complex or expensive products and services.
There are usually multitudes of
hidden aspects to your product, service, or business.
Sometimes, these are so taken
for granted by the business, so ignored and
undervalued... that it's easy to forget the market would
be fascinated by them.
In a well regarded story from
the 1920's, advertising copywriter Claude Hopkins cites
his meetings with Schlitz beer in the United States...
Every beer company was shouting
'pure' in their advertising. But nobody was explaining
the science behind it.
Hopkins was taken for a tour of
their facility, and was impressed by what he saw.
"I saw plate-glass rooms where
beer was dripping over pipes, and I asked the reason for
them.
They told me those rooms were filled with filtered air,
so the beer could be cooled with purity.
I saw great filters filled with white-wood pulp. They
explained how that filtered the beer. They showed how
they cleaned every pump and pipe, twice daily, to avoid
contaminations..."
He was amazed, and said as much,
to which they remarked "But every beer is made this
way".
But the market didn't know that.
Hopkins educated their market,
revealed truths that had been under-valued,
under-utilised, and not publicised.
The market then understood how
Schlitz beer was made.
Schlitz went from number 5 to
number 1.
There are very possibly aspects
of what you sell, or how you go about it, that should be
more widely known.
Educate your market, and they
will understand what makes you different. Knowing that,
they are more likely to favour you over your
competitors.
Mistake #9: Failing To Make
Transacting Easy...
You might be targeting the right
people, making a great offer, educating your market...
but undoing all that good work with poor transaction.
Do your customers like to order
online, but you can't offer that?
Do they hate the paperwork involved in buying from you?
Do they wonder why your invoices don't have a full
product description for the bookkeeping?
Does your secretary have an irritating phone manner?
The way you transact is
important to the customer experience of buying your
product or service.
How straight-forward it is to do business with you can
break an otherwise perfect ensemble of product and
promotion.
Here's our suggestion on what to
include in an evaluation of your transaction...
Method
Ask your customers how they
prefer to transact with you. Evaluate the responses, and
if a meaningful proportion like to transact in a certain
way, consider using it. Bending people to a manner of
transaction they don't like can be detrimental to
business if your competitors aren't so stubborn.
Speed and availability
Find out when your customers
like to contact, enquire, order, confirm or visit. If
you are not open or accessible in these times, you may
similarly be inconveniencing them.
Red-tape
Remove as much of the paperwork
as possible. Or consider moving some of the paperwork to
other parts of the transaction... spacing it all out can
be a clever way of adhering to red tape in 'stealth
mode'.
Reporting
How to your customers like their
invoices and statements looking? Do they like it written
or electronic? Try to provide what enough customers
want.
Personality
Empower your staff to smile, be
pleasant and enjoy their work. Recruit on attitude and
train in aptitude.
Fun
Lastly, don't be afraid to add
some component of fun.
Mistake #10: Failing To Solicit
A Response...
A mistake common in personal
selling is to be slow to ask for the sale.
'Closing' can be difficult.
You wouldn't forgive for too
long a salesperson who couldn't close, but a lot of
marketing materials get through making the same mistake.
And while a salesperson may fail
in 2 or 10 visits before you implement corrective
action, a letter, ad or commercial may knock on 10,000
doors and fail to ask for the sale.
That's an expensive mistake.
There is a rough but valuable
acronym to remember in your marketing material... AIDA.
Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action.
Action is explicitly asking the
reader, listener, browser or viewer to do what it is you
hope they'll do.
So after you have caught their
attention, delivered your education and aroused their
desire for your product or service... tell them exactly
what to do to get it.
A heartening fact is that
prospects don't like selling themselves. They enjoy
being respectfully led to the sale.
Our suggested path to take...
Know what action you want
Decide what it is you want your
prospect to do. If it's simply to contact you, that's
ok. If it's to visit you, that's ok, too. But know in
your mind exactly what you require them to do as the
'very next thing'
Ask them to do it
Ask your prospect explicitly to
take that action. Don't merely supply a telephone
number, but actually ask them to use it and ring you.
Give them the information
Supply them with whatever
information they'll need to take the action... your
address, contact details, opening hours, and other
pertinent information.
Lastly, a tip... have a
cheat-sheet you use to check your marketing material for
details like contact information, website addresses and
correct emails.
Mistake #11: Failing To Grow The
Value Of Your Customers...
Once you have a customer on
board, they are your most valuable asset.
If you've made it to this point,
you've invested heavily in getting that customer on
board.
That customer is now an asset to whom you must apply
ethical leverage... and nurture them to be worth more to
you over time.
There are two main ways to do
this...
1. Get them spending more
2. Get them transacting more
Let's quickly review some ideas
for these...
Up-selling, cross-selling and
add-selling
Up-selling is when you sell more
of whatever the customer came in to buy.
Cross-selling is where you sell
an alternative to what they came in for, but which still
satisfies the real need the customer had in the first
place.
Add-selling is where you sell
something in addition to what they came in for.
Selling other people's products
and services
Consider ways to extend your
core product or service to complementary ones that are
related. Like convenience products in a petrol station.
Bundling
Try bundling different products
and services. Hampers are the original way of bundling.
Referrals
Referrals should not be
accidents. Every transaction should be as
customer-lavishing as possible, so you can legitimately
ask your customer to recommend people to you.
Direct Reminders
An example of this is what good
hairdressers and dentists do all the time, by
pre-booking your next appointment and even reminding you
when it's approaching.
Loyalty and rewards
Loyalty systems can be simple or
expensive. A simple repeat purchase card that gets
punched, stamped or signed is enough. But magnetic or
barcode based systems are also returning dividends.
There are other ways of growing
the value of your customers... feel free to experiment,
but certainly include growing customer-value on your
agenda.
Mistake #12: Failing To Stick
With Proven Ideas...
The last mistake businesses are
often prone to making is almost invisible...
It's very simply failing to
stick with an idea that has worked.
Testing new ideas does not fly
in the face of this mistake. You should be testing ideas
against a control, and that control can be any idea that
has worked.
But it is criminal to grow tired
of a campaign, or change campaigns upon new agencies or
staff being appointed... if the old campaign is working
and meeting all requirements.
It's tempting to grow tired of
the same creative, and it's tempting for new staff to
seek to make a mark.
But neither of these are an
excuse for ceasing a campaign that is working well.
You should continue to use a
campaign until something better comes along, or
circumstances dictate a change of course.
Henry Ford, the car magnate,
famously grew tired of a campaign and lamented, "Why
don't we try something new?"
His staff then shyly pointed out
that the campaign hadn't even made it to the public yet.
He was simply too used to
discussing and seeing it within the company.
Fight the urge to abandon an old
idea without reason.
Stephen R Johnson
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