Customer-Centric Business Strategies for the SMB

Remember playing “Rock, Paper, Scissors?” The basics of the game consist of each player shaking a fist a number of times (priming) and then extending the same hand in a fist (rock), out flat (paper), or with the index and middle fingers extended (scissors). Each of these is referred to as a throw, and which one wins is dependent upon the opponent’s throw.

• Paper wins against Rock (paper covers rock)
• Rock wins against Scissors (rock smashing scissors)
• Scissors wins against Paper (scissors cut paper)

Does your marketing organization use the old rock, paper, scissors strategy? You know – prime the CEO for funding, and then throw out a campaign hoping to rock your prospects with creative copy, cover your market with mass communications, or finally, cut the price to encourage greater response? Since marketing campaigns are generally not limited to one dimension you may be throwing all three at once!

Some RPS players use strategies hoping to get inside their opponent’s mind to guess their next throw. Many players unconsciously throw in distinct patterns, so an observational player might pick up on those patterns and occasionally defeat their opponent. For example, some patterns a strategic player might look for:

• What was my opponent’s last throw?
• How frequently does my opponent seem to repeat that throw?
• How many total times has that throw been favored?

The trouble with RPS strategy is that it cannot be used consistently. You may not have the benefit of enough historical data to logically guess your opponent’s next throw, or worse, data latency, which means you can’t predict your opponent’s throw until it is too late. The same can happen when marketers use the age-old practice of merging historical response lists to develop prospecting files, and then push their marketing activities toward all those consumers.

Your entertaining commercial copy might rock. In fact, your agency said it was “right on target.” And your list may cover consumers reported to have the attributes of a potential buyer; however, your prospects may still cut-off your message faster than your VP of Sales can scream “don’t run with scissors!”

The proliferation of media and distribution channels, combined with consumers increasing demand for communications relevance, has created the perfect marketing database storm. As a result, the need for more rigorous marketing discipline and data competency has never been greater. At my company (an SMB / B-to-B / software development organization) I’ve approached the marketing database storm by blending current and historical data from across the company, allowing for faster and more relevant marketing communications.

I will say that it’s not easy – even for a small company. Customer data collected and stored in front office and back office systems, as well as third-party data, doesn’t always come together as planned. And you have to do more than just bolt data together; you need to help users make sense of it by transforming it into relevant information; cleansing it, storing it, and then delivering it in a timely, usable format where accuracy is never in question.

We still have plenty of room for improvement. However; I will say that it’s much more fun to prime my CEO with measurable ROI through focused campaigns that rock our prospects and customers with relevant communications, and cut costs by optimizing our marketing spend.