Ever stood in an empty room and delivered a key note speech ? There would be little point, unless your preparing yourself for the big event when your audience will appear.
Was it something you said, something you didn’t say ? While what you say certainly matters, where you say it will be equally as important, and its easily forgotten when were immersed in our little worlds whether its because your a digital marketer at heart or you have a favourite channel you like spending time selling and marketing through.
The point of marketing and sales is to make it easy for customers to buy from you, so if they can’t find you in the first place there is little chance of any business going down.
New Channels Can Become a Distraction From Tried And Tested Methods
Whilst a lot of marketers are heralding new channels like social networks as the new marketing Mecca we should never loose sight of what’s really important in marketing and that’s knowing where your customers are and what they really need from you. Sure they may be using tools like the internet but that’s just one part of the journey a prospect might take to becoming a customer.
Sales and marketing isn’t a process you only switch on when you need new business, its an on going strategy that you can use to ring fence your business, to ensure its more stable and connected to your market whilst simultaneously building a defensive wall against your competitors.
So, instead of spending all your time reaching out to people based on your own marketing or sales preferences you should be using every opportunity to reach your audience on their terms and that includes using every channel at your disposal, because all channels work.
Its Easy To Become Narrow Minded About What Works And What Doesn’t Unless You Find Evidence That Demonstrates Otherwise
I’ve got a stack of books on my shelf form well known marketers like Drayton Bird, David Ogilvy and Dan Kennedy (interesting that they all start with a “D”), all of whom agree (myself included) that the marketing journey starts with who the customer is and where they are, before you start doing anything else. Once you’ve established the groundwork only then go build your road to the front door.
Whenever I find myself reaching and diving into these books I soon realise that a lot of the sales and marketing principles I’ve learned which include using established media (although I love the technology end of marketing and sales) and associated methods, like sales letter, advertising, telemarketing and campaign sequences are still effective and important parts of the mix. Its a reminder how easily we become narrow minded in our views about what’s important in marketing and sales.
We Let Ourselves Become Narrow Minded Because We Want To Believe We’ve Already Done Everything We Can
Were only human at the end of the do, so our experiences of trying things that didn’t work or weren’t very successful versus those where we’ve had successes will affect our decisions.
Or, it could be that we’ve got an established customer base and think its all sorted now and everything will be OK. So if that were ever true big companies would never fall and they’re always falling.
Just take one channel as an example, like the internet and you’ve got a great big can of complexity and choice from SEO, content marketing, pop ups, video, ad-words or PPC, social media, email marketing and much more.
Even when we know that all these things can work, we can feel uncomfortable around some, uneducated about approaching others, or it could be that were constrained by resources like skills or finances so we pick our battles based on the army we have available.
If Your Serious About Staying In Business You Need To Consider All The Options and Question Everything, Even Your Own Beliefs
If your committed to moving your business to the next level, your going to need to look at every aspect of your sales and marketing system and that starts with going back to basics, to the very heart of your engine.
Without evidence, which in business is results like leads and sales you can’t really make any decisions about what you’re doing so you must have tracking in place.
Things like numbers of calls, mail outs or page rank and click through can guide you in a particular direction but they won’t necessarily bring in any money unless you achieve more tangible results like leads and sales.
Measurement should also fit your sales cycle so that you can see the activity building required to till the next stage in the cycle eventually leading to a lead or sale.
Size Isn’t An Excuse For Being Narrow Minded But It Can Become A Trap
Whilst reading over my favourite books I’m reminded that one of the mistakes small to medium sized business make is trying to play the same game as their larger counterparts.
Whilst the big boys may choose, or can afford to play around with things like branding, the smaller business must pay attention to things like cost of acquisition and building real relationship through its marketing and sales activities.
Steps You Can Take To Ensure People Start Listening To You
- Take a look at what you’re doing and find out what you’re not doing ?
- If you’re not doing something, why are you not doing it and can you start doing it or is something holding you back ?
- What could you plan to start doing that would make a difference long term ?
- What can you do immediately that would create a short term outcome ?
I’ve been looking at this myself and I’ve already decided to start some telephone prospecting for a new venture I’m involved with and have also planned on running a series of focused ad-words campaigns.
So what have you planned to do to ensure your key audiences are listening to you ?
