When Marketing Hurts

How can something as simple as marketing become so painful?

All too often, we make the process of marketing our products and services far too complicated and too time-consuming, and we see little results. Not surprisingly, this soon becomes an effort that we avoid altogether.

What if, instead, marketing could be on target, easy, and enjoyable? Impossible, you say? Read on.

The most common marketing mistake we see is a business (maybe yours?) using the wrong strategies to obtain its goals. Business owners assume that clever writing and design in their brochure or website will bring them all the customers/clients they need. But after investing thousands of dollars in their promotional tools, what do they have? A closet full of essentially useless brochures, and a website that no one visits.

Without the correct marketing strategy in place, business owners soon discover that such investments do not yield the boost in clients or revenues they seek.

HOW DOES THE RIGHT MARKETING STRATEGY WORK?

A sound strategy that is focused on realistic expectations and market demand will make the difference between success and failure.

Let's look at the case of a real estate agent who was trying to open a new firm in an existing, highly oversaturated market. The agent originally intended to do the following:

• Add signage to an office in their existing target neighborhood

• Send out fliers announcing the agent's availability to interested buyers and sellers

• Try to gain recognition through coverage in the local press

Unfortunately, none of the above tactics would have helped reach the agent's target market at all.

Why not? Consider these factors:

• The agent's office was not attractive, so few people would bother to look at the signage

• The fliers would have ended up in the garbage as junk mail

• Like most businesses, the agent's knowledge of the tactics needed to gain publicity was completely incorrect

A news release is completely different than an advertisement - as its name indicates, it is only acceptable to send one out when you have news to share that would be of interest to the consumers of that newspaper, TV/radio station, etc. Alas, when you are a business owner who's really excited to announce your new offering, it's really hard to make that distinction. Publicity is a very specific animal - it must be approached correctly, or you'll completely alienate the publisher or editor(s) who can help you out later when you do have viable news to report. (Learn more about how to make publicity work for you.)

So, what strategies would actually work for a real estate firm such as this, that has a very limited marketing budget?

We suggested the following tactics:

• Create local walking & biking tour events in their target neighborhood to demonstrate their industry expertise, and their knowledge of the region's historic buildings PLUS to gain exposure quickly to their buyers & sellers

• Using the staff's influence to capitalize on introducing the firm to local homeowners whom they associated with, who had their kids in the same schools, who they volunteered with in community groups or similar.

• Take proactive steps to benefit neighborhood organizations while also building the agency's community profile & corporate brand

Additionally, we showed the agency that focusing on one neighborhood was not enough: They had to target a much wider region to give them a sufficient market base from which to cull the sales needed to reach their goals.

Using this strategy also provided the agency with the focus (neighborhood events) they could leverage to gain local publicity. In this way, they will not just be pitching an "ad" for their company in the future. Instead, they'll be sending out "news-" worthy announcements.

That is just one example of how a sound strategy allows a company to enjoy its marketing, while putting them on track for success. Allison Bliss Consulting can help put you on the same track.

Here are a few other strategies that can be employed. The trick is to craft together the ones (or invent others—this is by NO means a comprehensive list of strategies) that will work to support each other for your own particular company, staff talents, time and budget:

• Incentivize your sales . Ask your happy customers to refer you and make it worth their while. Offer tickets to a concert, a free therapeutic massage gift certificate, a bottle of wine, a significant cash incentive or whatever you feel is something worthy of their time and appropriate to your business. For example, if you sell a service for $1500, you should give a gift equivalent to about 10% of that sale or $150. It’s the fastest and easiest way to develop a clientele or customer base with buyers who have already been told how terrific your company is. They’ll be willing to buy more quickly, thus speeding up your ‘sales cycle’ (how long it takes someone to make a purchase) so you can make more money faster selling products or services you have to solve their problems.

• Speak to community or business groups to educate them on the thing you do. Teach them something useful in a dynamic and interesting manner. Then, after the workshop allow them to sign up for either your products, services or your newsletter so you can stay in touch with them and they can learn more from you over time.

• Ongoing and consistent communications generate deeper relationship building. That is what makes sales for smaller businesses.

• Advertising can be costly and not very effective. But if done correctly, selecting the right publications with the right design & copywriting it can be a great strategy to outreach to a wider audience. If you don’t have expertise in getting huge results from ads, hire a marketing professional to show you how to do it correctly. (see our marketing tool on Advertising That Works).

• Writing articles that are published in online newsletters, journals, magazines or newspapers of your target market is another way to outreach and educate. Most business owners make the mistake of pitching their stories to their largest daily newspaper. If you’re not a professional journalist, you likely won’t get picked up. But smaller newsletters and other publications can generate as good a response rate if you’re targeting the right readers, make your stories useful and involving (get professional help if you are not a writer) and the publishers and editors are often thrilled to get contributing writers.

• Find reps or distributors for your products. These people are already connected to your market—a valuable and time-saving resource. So, when you pay a 15-40% commission, consider how much time and expense you’ll be saving to outreach to and develop that market yourself.

• Offer useful ancillary products that support your main product or service. Sell those for lower cost to help introduce people to your company. Show them something of value so they gain a comfort level that they’ll also get great value when purchasing your more expensive products or services.

If you want another few strategies, let us know exactly what you’re trying to accomplish. We’ll happily offer them for free.