Whether I'm coaching a new client in marketing or creating a programme for them, one issue that we focus on getting straight right up front is what business they are really in.  As I boringly say time and time again, marketing is about focusing on the customer, so describing your business from the customer's viewpoint rather than your own is an important place to start.

The answer is not about what you sell - it is about what the customer is looking to buy.  Take some everyday examples:

• Do you want glasses - or do you want to be able to see?
• Do you want a drill - or do you want a hole in the wall?
• Do you want to rent a flat - or do you want a new home?
• Do you want a photographer - or do you want to capture the memory of your wedding/kids etc.?
• Do you want a personal stylist - or do want to look good?

You get the idea.  At a recent seminar on Successful Selling (presented in conjunction with Ben Turner of The SalesPro Online Magazine) our delegates struggled, as so many of us do, to articulate their features in terms of benefit to the customer.  But turn it around and focus on what the customer is really looking for and the question is slightly different.  Not just what benefit does your product/service deliver - but is it one that will make a difference to a customer (and not just one customer but, hopefully, a whole group of them)?  If you can't offer a benefit the customer is prepared to pay for - do you have a viable business anyway?

The answers will help you communicate the difference you can make, but will also drive innovation in your products and services.  Thinking too narrowly about what you do can put you out of business when the markets move on - for example companies that think they are in the business of CDs but are really in music are going to be put out of business by the downloading of files.

If you're not sure what customers are really looking for or what they want from whatever you provide then the best thing is to ask the question.  You can ask your customers, ask the people who chose not to buy, ask friends, family, business contacts.  Talking it through will help you crystallise the answer to the question 'what business are you in'?  Armed with that information you can develop your offerings and marketing promotions to present your customers with something they will really value, something that will solve their problems more effectively than any competitors can.

What business are you really in?

This week I'm delighted to welcome a guest blogger, Neil Edwards from The Marketing Eye:

If I had a pound for every time I’d heard someone say: "we tried marketing once and it didn’t work", I could have retired long ago.

Not only does the phrase betray a lack of understanding of what marketing really is, it is often a reliable indicator of how the fateful marketing programme will have been run in the first place.

Despite many advances in knowledge and information sharing, marketing remains one of the least understood of the business disciplines. Shrouded in mystery, and slippery in its accountability, it is a topic that everybody has an opinion on and most people believe they can do better than the marketing department.

Marketing isn’t rocket science, nor does it demand significant creativity or originality (albeit a little imagination helps). Largely it is a matter of process, understanding of the human psyche and persistent effort – otherwise known as hard work.

Most marketing programmes operate like this:

A marketing campaign will be sent out. The target buyer will respond or not (most often not). Any orders will be followed up (hopefully) and the remainder will be discarded and forgotten.

This formula applies whether we are talking about a direct mail campaign, e-shot, advert, trade show or any other form of marketing.

Is it any wonder that responses are typically way below 1% and that there is no return on investment?

To run a marketing campaign in this way borders on insanity. No regard is given to the buying process and little respect is given to the intelligence and needs of the buyer. In other words, the campaign is not buyer centric.

In earlier posts, I have referred to Jolles model of the buying process and the stages that we all go through when considering a purchase. The stages apply whether it is an impulse buy or a major capital investment – all that changes is the speed with which we go through the phases and potentially the number of people that will be involved in the decision.

If we take a step back for a moment, it is clear that the buying process is highly sophisticated. The buyer operates under a whole range of influences:
– Past experience
– Peer group comment
– Social media
– Google searches
– Webinars / Seminars / Events
– Advertising / direct marketing

While advertising and direct marketing still has a role, we as buyers are much more resistant to it. We like to feel that we are researching and finding our own solutions and only want to engage the sales person in the final stages of the buying process, when our mind is pretty much made up.

An intelligent marketing programme therefore needs to take account of the buying process and run like this:

The buyer will be engaged at all stages of the buying process with methods and content that are appropriate to where he or she is in the cycle.

In the consideration phase, which may be conscious or unconscious, we need to be educating and informing to stimulate interest. This could be with White Papers, blog posts and press releases or indeed with advertising and direct mail – it is the content that is important, not the medium of delivery (which should be varied).

Once the buyer has decided to act, he or she will then start to work out exactly what they want from their purchase. Case studies, product sheets and seminars can be useful in this phase.

When the criteria are defined, the buyer will then start to look for solutions to meet those needs. Past experience, peer group recommendations and web searches will all come into play.

If our previous engagement programme has been successful, we will be firmly on the consideration list – and potentially the only name on it.

The process of converting a prospect into a client can take many months – years in some cases. Jolles tells us that we spend 79% of our time in the consideration phase, umming and ahhing over whether we have a need or not. Our marketing contact programmes must therefore be multi-faceted and continuous.

Of course, the process doesn’t stop when our product or service has been selected. We need to keep engaging the client to make sure that our solution has properly met the need and then stay in touch to ensure retention, repeat purchases and up-sell.

When we look at the buying process in this way it is obvious that simple outbound campaigns are destined to fail. Marketing must comprise multi-touch activity that builds dialogue and engages the prospect at all stages in the buying process.

The theory, when converted to practice, produces results. Recent research by Forrester Consulting showed that businesses that market successfully:

1. Focus on lead generation as a process
2. Profile and segment prospects based on customer behaviour (not just demographics)
3. Design content that builds dialogue
4. Employ some form of lead scoring / prioritisation measure
5. Nurture prospects that are not yet ready to buy
6. Make certain that marketing works collaboratively with sales

The Forrester research further shows that these businesses enjoy a more robust pipeline, better customer insight, improved marketing and sales accountability and ultimately improved marketing ROI.

What more can anybody want?

Neil Edwards, Managing Director, The Marketing Eye

Acknowledgements

How managing leads pays off in a stronger, more qualified pipeline - Forrester Consulting November 2009

Adam Needles - Demand Generation Blog 2009-10

I've just completed two Simply Better Marketing seminars for the Chartered Institute of Marketing and Business Link on this very subject, presenting with an expert in PPC (pay per click) and SEO (search engine optimisation), Luke Quilter of Sleeping Giant Media.  The events were well attended (not surprisingly, as the internet remains such a hot topic), but there was a very wide range of experience and need in the room - varying from those who had yet to set up their website, to those who were interested in tweaking their existing optimisation activities to boost results.  (And if you're in Kent you might want to know the next seminar in the series is on selling - see the EventsKent website for details.)

We set out with the objective of helping people decide if they should or could undertake their online marketing themselves, or whether they would be better off (mentally and economically!) to let an expert take the strain in one or more areas.  The answer, as in any similar decision, depends on whether you can earn more money focusing on your core business rather than spending it on the intricacies of online marketing.  For me the event confirmed that, while the headline theories of PPC and SEO are relatively straightforward, the subtleties of applying these are far more challenging.  It takes regular and frequent attention to develop a campaign that ensures your website is found by the right people - and that those people then stick around on your website long enough to be persuaded to buy or contact you (depending on your objective of course).  Not only that but the rules change all the time so it seems to me that it is only those that spend their whole day on the subject that can possibly keep up!

If you believe you have the oppportunity to earn significant return from your website then I would strongly advise getting a professional to run your search marketing activities.  On the other hand I could tell that for some people it was almost a hobby - something they were developing quite a passion about! 

Whether you decide to do it yourself or look for help, there were some useful pointers that came out of the event that I thought I'd share with you here:

1. Know your numbers - the beauty of online marketing is how trackable it is, so you MUST be making the most of the information you can get (for free) from Google Analytics to help drive your decision making.
2. Always keep the user front of mind - you want to be found by search engines, but only so that you can be found by your prospective customers.  Your content and the user experience need to work for human beings!
3. Don't forget that internet marketing is not the only game in town - it needs to be related to, in support of or supported by, whatever you do offline.
4. An amazing 77% of people do not scroll down a page - if your information is important put it at the top!
5. Pay per click costs can easily rack up - but you don't have to be paying the highest cost per click to get higher up Google rankings.  Making sure your campaign and content is integrated and relevant will save you money and get a better quality of visitor.
6. Natural search is 85% about what happens off your website (people linking to you) rather than the more controllable stuff on your site.
7. When considering social networking decide if your brand (and you) are sociable too! 

If you're uncertain then have a go - you might be surprised how much you enjoy it.  And you'll be better informed if you do decide to talk to an expert at a later date!

Last week I had great fun running a branding clinic for small businesses local to me in Canterbury.  It was a collaboration between the Chartered Institute of Marketing (for whom I am the Kent small business champion) and Canterbury Christ Church University's Business Forum.  The subject obviously struck a chord as the event was packed to bursting!

The highlight of the session was a peer review of each company's branding - which really brought home to everyone that you should never be complacent or make assumptions about how well your branding is working!  To help make the process more effective the first half of the session concentrated on the importance of branding - no matter what size of business you are - and some of the critical issues that have to be addressed, such as:

• Brand values - are you clear about what image you are aiming to communicate?  Your brand is a shortcut to creating an emotional response in customers - make sure it is the response you are after!
• Consistency - do you carry your brand values and design diligently through every aspect of your promotional activities?  This includes leaflets, websites, business cards, reports, invoices, signage, vehicles, entrance halls, etc. 
• Service/behaviour - how is your brand reflected, and reinforced or weakened, by other aspects of your business such as service delivery, the behaviour of your staff or the cleanliness of your vans? 

Although the presentation section of the event was not as popular as the clinic, I know it was important to get everyone to a common understanding of the importance of branding and ways of approaching the subject.  This meant all participants were better placed to give constructive feedback on the materials everyone brought along.   It was a noisy and energetic session, with discussions ranging from the use of specific words/language, positive and negative aspects of expensive-looking brochures, weight of paper used for printing, and the emotional meaning of different colours!  Everyone who attended took away ideas they could use to improve their business - which was, of course, our objective.

Looking after your brand is essential if you want a great future for your business - it doesn't have to be expensive, but it does have to be thoughtful and considered.  Peer review proved to be a powerful tool for getting really valuable feedback, and is something that you can all do with friends, family or colleagues as long as they are some-what representative of your target audience.  Don't ask a teenager for input if they are not in your target market - you could be sent off down the wrong track completely!  If you haven't asked recently then I suggest you give it a go and find out 'what does your brand say about you?'

In the last of my 7 marketing myths I tackle pricing - a subject that has the potential to tie us all in knots, with most businesses being concerned about over-pricing and losing customers.  In truth this fear means it is more likely to be the case that you are under-pricing your services!  Not a trivial matter as price is the only business variable that is directly linked to your income.

I heard the following definition of marketing used in a presentation once – and it made me smile!

“Marketing’s objective is to be able to charge the highest possible price for what you offer – and for people to smile after!”

What this highlights is that it is value people are after, and if they get the value they expect and/or need then the price will be worth paying.   You only have to examine your own buying behaviour to be convinced the lowest price is not the only factor in your decision making.  Do you always shop in the cheapest supermarket?  Eat in McDonalds? Drive an Eastern European Car?  Wear clothes from discount stores?

Probably not.  At least not all the time.  As a key part of your marketing, price sends a powerful message about where you are positioned in the market, and what your customers should expect.   Those companies charging higher prices for seemingly similar goods are successfully convincing their buyers that they offer additional value – be it in the engineering, the service, or simply in the branding and packaging!  Reliability and trust in your service are worth a premium to businesses who are too busy to want to have to re-do things when they go wrong.

Pricing is a complex issue, with many factors to take into account: target audience expectations, competition, fixed vs variable costs, target profit margin, long vs short term gain.  The discount end of any market is a difficult place to operate unless you really have the lowest costs - and ask yourself this, are the customers who only focus on price and quibble every penny the ones that you want to be doing business with.  You can choose where you position yourself if the rest of your offering backs it up.

 “Quality is remembered long after the price is forgotten.” Ed Sabol, founder NFL Films. 

One advantage many small businesses have is the opportunity to vary and test their pricing to find out just how sensitive their customers are.  My advice would be, having weighed up all your options on the above factors, start off slightly higher than your first instinct.  You can more easily lower price than raise it, as many companies who have rushed to discount in the recession will find, and you might be pleasantly surprised to find that the increased profit per transaction makes up for slightly lower sales.

And before you even consider lowering your price make sure you have done everything you can in your marketing to identify and communicate the value of what you are offering.  Otherwise you are just throwing money away!

If I could give you one thing as a present this Christmas it would be time.  Not more of my time (although that might be good too) but more of your own time, to spend on your Marketing.  I think time is the most undervalued of all success factors - well, not time itself exactly, because time is finite and we all get given the same amount.  I mean quality time - or time spent doing quality thinking about your goals, aspirations and plans for your business and your marketing.

I've been racking my brains for days for the one special piece of advice that I could give to you as my Christmas gift.  The one thing that will change the way you do business next year and increase your chances of success.  So here it is again:  

Make time for your Marketing

I know it does not sound earth shattering, but if you don't put the time into your most important business function who will?  And I know your time is money, and you may decide to delegate some of the detail, but if it's your business you really should delegate complete control of Marketing.

If you do manage to find the time - quality, uninterrupted time - the next question is, of course, what should you do with it?  My advice is focus on these 3 low cost, but most important, ways of improving your Marketing for 2010:

1. Set your goals and make your plan. 
2. Find out more about your customer base and target market.
3. Think of ways to improve the service to your customers.

A good plan will focus the mind and stop you making costly mistakes - it is as much about what you won't do as what you will do, and it is very much about understanding why you are choosing one option over another.

The more you can learn about what motivates and delights your customers (current and potential) the better positioned you are to ensure you are delivering great value and communicating effectively.  You can also test and confirm the assumptions you have made in your plan - are there enough of them out there to deliver you the income and profit you are forecasting? 

Simply taking a little bit of time out each week to speak to your customers, or follow up on a product/service delivery, can give you vital feedback and ideas on how to continually improve.

Growing your business is in your hands - and it is only through the Marketing decisions you make that you can do that.  What could possibly be more important use of your precious time?

Merry Christmas and a Marketing-Happy New Year!

No, no, no.  I totally disagree - primarily on the basis that most decisions to 'do something' are taken on the hoof, reacting to an opportunity, without having done the thinking that will ensure the 'something' is targeted and executed well.  I'm talking about price changes, new product innovations and 'not to be missed' advertising opportunities in magazines, papers and directories that your customers never read!

My other reason for saying no to doing something rather than nothing is that marketing tends to be about the longer term.  Decisions and actions taken now could take weeks or even months to fully pay off and, customers being complex creatures, you need to allow for knock on effects (or what you might call integrated marketing).  Unless you have the ground work in place to allow your business to react intelligently to last minute offers, the best answer is no.  A bargain is not a bargain if it is something you never needed in the first place!

In most cases the worst that will happen is you will have wasted time and money and seen no return.  But the worst could be that you attract interest for the wrong reasons and damage your brand and reputation in your marketplace.  Or what if you are too successful - can you handle the fallout from disappointing customers who may never return?  A nice problem to have maybe but one that will need a considered response not just muddling through. 

Maybe you believe there's no such thing as bad publicity?  Tell that to some of the big brands that have failed to manage their PR properly and have lost market share.  Perrier Water struggled to recover from its mishandling of the Benzene scare in the 1990s, and Hoover have the dubious honour of presiding over one of the greatest marketing disasters of all time.  You may remember it.  In 1992 they launched a promotion to shift a backlog of vacuum cleaners and washing machines gathering dust in the warehouse, which ended up costing the company £48m and dragging their name through the dirt. 

For you the stakes may not be as high, but the lesson remains the same.  Don't be reactive be proactive and plan your marketing thoroughly to increase your changes of success.  When resources are limited, be that time or money, it makes even more sense to take considered decisions on how you use them.  When (not if) you do your marketing plan you will do the analysis and thinking that will increase your understanding of your customers and market.  Armed with this knowledge you will be better placed to make instant decisions and take advantage of those 'not to be missed' offers, with greater chance of success!

There is a common misconception that if you use the internet for your marketing it is going to be cheaper than other options.  I think what people are really saying is that the internet has made some marketing activities much more accessible - we can all have a go at doing it ourselves.  There are readily available tools and very cheap options for creating websites.  We can all send an email, so sending electronic direct mail to large groups of people can be done at the press of just a few buttons.  And the point of social media is that anyone can join in - and there are no fees!

But just because something is easy or cheap to do does not make it effective.  'Doing it yourself' can, I believe, be a false economy.  And 'expensive' is subjective - it needs to relate to the value you place on or derive from the results achieved.  The starting point in assessing the cost/value of marketing activity is to set your marketing budget and your objectives, because then anything within budget is affordable and the test is whether it will contribute towards achieving the objectives set.  Then consider if, for your target customers, the internet is the right way to reach them.  Chances are, unless you have a specifically online business, it is not the only way and may not even be the primary way.

Then, whether your chosen activities are internet-based or traditional, ask yourself 2 questions.  Firstly, can I earn more money working on my business myself than paying someone to do this activity for me?  If you can then it is definitely a false economy to do it yourself.  Secondly, do I have the skills to do this activity well?  This is critical, and you have to be honest.  The reason that people are professionals and experts in public relations, design, writing, advertising etc. is that you need to be a specialist and have experience to stand the best chance of getting it right.  Design and copywriting are key areas that I see businesses struggling with when they opt for the DIY route rather than engaging a professional. 

Be honest.  Even if you can learn the technical skills to build your own website or use desktop publishing software to produce your leaflets, do you have the creative flair and talent of a trained graphic designer?   I know I haven't.  And if you haven't it will show, reflecting poorly on your brand and the overall impression you are conveying to your customers.  Many small business websites look too obviously homegrown.  There are many freelance designers to choose from and their time tends not to be extortionately priced, but the value reflected back into your business through good design can be priceless.

Writing is an easier skill to acquire, and is something that I think I'm not bad at.  But my range of styles is limited, and it takes me a long time agonising over how to say something in the right way.  Much better that I spend my time on the things that I do very well and engage a professional writer where it really counts - for the press for example, or for email marketing (getting back to what is cheap and therefore deceptively easy).

If you get it wrong or waste your time then marketing on the internet can definitely be expensive - just as much as any other marketing activity.  Any spend on marketing should be seen as an investment in the growth of your business rather than as an expense, and the budget managed accordingly to deliver value, focused around customers and objectives.  And that is true whether you do it yourself or pay someone else to do it for you.

Or do you just fail in a bigger way?  The danger in a big market, i.e. one with lots of potential customers for the product or service you are offering, is that everything else is bigger too.  That includes the competition, and the cost of getting to all those customers.  The size of the market undoubtedly gives reassurance that the market exists - remember if no-one else is doing what you want to do there could be a good reason - but, even if you have limitless resources, chances are you will be more successful focusing on a smaller niche within the bigger market.

Working out which niche you are going to focus on is the first step to success.  A niche is identified by the specific characteristics of the customers you are targeting, rather than in terms of the product attributes.  For example, if you sell ecommerce websites the niche is customers who want to sell online.  When I am coaching or meeting new clients, the first thing I do is ask them to describe their customers in detail.  The extent to which they really understand who might buy from them and why tells me a lot about their approach to marketing.

So, no surprises, I've said it before, all of marketing (and business) starts with the customer.  It is an excellent exercise to try and write down everything you know about your customers.  Visualise them in the place they live or work and where your product or service will help them most:

• Where are they - environment, location, geography?
• Who are they - age, gender, profession, lifestyle?
• What problems are they facing that you can help them solve?
• What options do they have?
• How might they go about finding a solution to their problem?
• How can you make it easy for them?

The things you learn from this exercise should feed into the marketing decisions you then make about product, price, place and promotion.  And if you find you don't have enough understanding about your target market then you must take steps to learn more, indeed you should never stop learning about what makes them tick as it will help you stay ahead of the competition, anticipating their needs before they know themselves.  How do you do this?  It will depend on the scale of your operation and budget available, but it does not have to be expensive:

• Talk to your existing customers regularly, or get out and meet potential customers informally.  Sound out your ideas and listen to the feedback.
• Don't just listen to satisfied customers.  If you lose a customer take the trouble to find out why - it could be something you can easily fix and either win them back, or at the very least, stop more customers going the same way.
• Create lots of opportunities for customers, or enquirers, to give feedback about their experiences.  Even if they don't avail themselves of the opportunity you will create a positive impression by being open to receiving comments. 
• For larger populations use market research surveys to give you more quantitative data on your subject. 
• Or use the resources of the internet to look for communities or fora where they might be discussing issues pertinent to your business.

Without customers you have no business - learn to love them and nurture them if you want to be successful, whether they exist in the 10s, 100s or 1000s.  You might also want to read my previous article on this topic: Know your niche!

Does the best product always win the most business/customers?  A popular marketing buzzphrase is USP - unique selling point or proposition - but do buyers really seek uniqueness?  It is easy to get hung up on uniqueness and differentiation in your product or proposition, to the detriment of other aspects of the customer experience.  Or, in other words, by not getting the basics right in meeting customer needs/wants.

Most famously when people talk about battles between products they cite Betamax vs VHS.  Sony's Betamax format is claimed to be the better technology, while JVC's VHS won the war for dominance by simply making it easier for the customer to get hold of and use their product.  Sony believed, I don't know why, that higher quality recordings would be the key to commercial success for Betamax.  Whereas JVC recognised the public's attraction to being able to watch films at home whenever they wanted - and gave them what they wanted.  Meeting consumer needs - the bottom line of marketing!   

Betamax vs VHS may be an extreme example.  But it illustrates the point that you need to understand your customers well in order to meet their needs.  Although this may be easier than it sounds as their needs might be quite simple.  In their book, Simply Better (http://www.simply-better.biz/), Patrick Barwise and Sean Meehan argue that the emphasis on differentiation has gone too far, and that all customers really want is a quality product, reliable service and value for money.  If you can deliver these consistently better than your competitors then you have the advantage.  They believe that while unique might be exciting and appealing, it doesn't drive business success.  It's a controversial position, and not without its dissenters among marketing academics, but it is an attractive one for small businesses as it encourages focus on small improvements and innovations that are within your influence.

At the core of your product you may have a technology or process that is no different to anyone else, but concentrating on the things you can control, from initial contact to invoicing and after sales, can be where you score your winning points.  You should never be complacent or lazy to keep on innovating, never too proud to ‘borrow' ideas from others, and never underestimate how that small change might translate into a big advantage. 

Question every aspect of delivering your product or service and ensure that you do each step to the best of your ability - and while your product may not be the number one in the market, you will increasingly delight your customers and be sure to stand out from the crowd.