“Our job is to connect to people, to interact with them in a way that leaves them better than we found them, more able to get where they’d like to go.” – Seth Godin
Alright, we are kicking off our 10-year anniversary content series with a post on 10 Things To Do For Marketing Success.
Let’s get in to it!
Know Your Customer
Successful marketing starts with an intimate understanding of your customer. What does she want? What is she trying to avoid? What keeps her up at night? These are all questions, you should know the answer. If you don’t, it’ll make communicating in a compelling way much more difficult.
If your marketing isn’t working and you didn’t take the time to get to know your customers. Start with an empathy map. It will help you quickly flesh out important insights about your customer that will make your marketing infinitely more powerful.
Don’t Fall in Love with The Solution
We all love our products and services, but in most cases, our customers don’t care. I’m sorry to tell you that, but it’s true.
Your customers care about their problems and your solutions only matter in the context of moving a customer from where he is to where he wants to be. If you focus solely on your solutions, your messaging will lack resonance and you will probably come off as “pushy.”
Build an Audience
Do you want to make all of your marketing easier? Build an audience of people that know, like and trust you. Just as a pastor needs a congregation and a pop star needs fans, a business needs to build a list of prospects whose problems you can solve. This will not only be a less expensive way to market new products and services, but if you build your audience right, the people will become evangelist and market your business for you.
Use Direct Response
Techopedia defines direct response marketing as:
“… a type of marketing that elicits a specific, measured response resulting from a consumer’s direct response to a marketer.”
What is the opposite of direct response marketing? Branding.
Many businesses see a company like Coca Cola and try to mimic its marketing. Coca Cola is successful right? Why not copy what works? The problem is your business likely doesn’t have Coca Cola ‘s marketing budget and can’t afford to market to everyone. Build a brand with advertising can be very expensive.
A direct response marketing campaign attempts to focus on a smaller group of potential customers, more likely to take an immediate action and measures the results. This is a much less expensive strategy and has a faster feedback loop as well.
Don’t Throw Away Branding
Okay, so first we say don’t copy Coca Cola, and now we are saying don’t completely throw away branding. Yes, branding is a great messaging strategy, when you have an audience.
What’s the difference?
- The audience is much smaller and using branding messages that don’t require immediate response is much less expensive.
- Branding can be a powerful way to build community and mobilize your audience.
So, branding is good, just not when your company’s payroll is dependent on a successful marketing campaign bringing in new customers.
Go Offline and Then Back Online Again
As a digital marker it is easy to forget about offline marketing. But with everyone seemingly online now, sometimes it makes sense to engage in marketing tactics that take place offline.
There is nothing like meeting someone face to face at an event or speaking directly to someone on the phone. Especially in a world full of fleeting YouTube ads.
Sometimes trying to make a connection with a single person is the best strategy. Focusing solely on offline marketing may be too expensive and not scalable, but in conjunction with online tactics you have a powerful multi-pronged approach.
Understand the Market Decides
The market decides what works. Its that simple. You may have had a great campaign idea, you may have followed best practices, but in the end the market decides what works and what doesn’t. So instead of having meeting after meeting discussing amongst experts what will work, try to get a minimal viable product in front of a potential customer as quickly as possible and go from there.
Create Amazing Content
Content is still king or at least royally important in your marketing. However, in 2018 and moving into 2019, your content standards will have to improve.
If you want to attract customers or rank on Google, you’ll have to create amazing content.
What is amazing content?
- Content that is specific and helpful to your audience.
- Content that exhibits thought leadership and expertise.
- Content that is substantial and practical.
Everything you write doesn’t need to be an “Ultimate Guide” but the days of just posting 300-word blog articles are gone.
Make sure you sprinkle in some epic content that wows your audience.
Speak to the Pain
Your messaging should convey the wants and aspirations of your customers, but it should also speak to where he or she is now. Sometimes, that is not a great place. It’s a painful or ugly place. But speaking to where the customer is now, conveys that you understand the problem and it also implies you can solve it.
Make Your Customer the Hero
There is a great TED talk by Nancy Duarte called, The Secret Structure of Great Talks. In it, she speaks about the power of telling stories and understanding the audience (when giving a talk) is the hero. Not you, the presenter.
This is a simple but powerful idea if applied to your marketing. In our messaging, we often position our company, our service as the hero. But that conflicts with our customers personal journey. Your customer believes she is the hero. That means you are the mentor that aids along the way.
Now take a look at your website, your service pages.
Are you positioning your company as the hero or your customer?
Successful Marketing Simplified
When it comes down to it, successful marketing is about putting the right message in front of the right audience at the right time. I hope these 10 ideas help you create successful marketing campaigns and strategically approach your marketing moving forward.
