Most businesses not meeting their growth objectives are making one or more of these 12 mistakes...
Mistake #1: Failing To Have A Marketing Plan...
The first mistake a business will make is not having a marketing plan. Most businesses have a marketing treatise, but not a plan.
Their marketing plan is created once, consulted rarely, and never becomes part of a working document.
But if the plan that drives growth isn't part of weekly management, how will it be reached?
A marketing plan is not a document that sits on a shelf. It sits on the desk, and gets opened daily, or at least weekly.
This is what's in a Strategy and Action marketing plan...
1. A summary of your market research findings
2. A summary of your competitor research findings
3. A summary of your SWOT analysis
4. Key issues arising from all of these that chart the big picture
5. The Unique Selling Proposition or core market focus, around which all company activities can be judged
6. A budget with projected sales, projected expenses, on a monthly basis, for the next 5 years
7. Last month's actual incomes and expenses
8. Every month's new-customer acquisition activities for the next 5 years
9. Every month's existing-customer retention activities for the next 5 years
10. A list of the key staff and their responsibilities within this 5 year plan
11. Minutes from the weekly meetings that drive this plan
If you're thinking this marketing plan mustn't look like a spiral-bound document, you're right.
It's more likely to be a light folder of core material, but growing in weekly minutes.
Importantly, it will contain what you know of the situation your business is in, where you're going, and how you're faring in getting there.
...It's a navigation tool.
Mistake #2: Failing To Focus On The Right Customer...
Failing to focus on the right customer is surprisingly common because it's both a strategic issue and an execution issue.
Strategy
Three questions...
Do you know who your most profitable, available and contactable potential customers are? Do you actively source these customers in preference to others? Do you ensure your staff do the same?
It's possible to increase business by merely selecting certain targets and deselecting others.
Rank your customers from top to bottom in terms of their cumulative value to you.
Then profile your top 20% by demographics (like age, sex, occupation and location) and business factors (industry, employees, turnover, products and services required).
Chances are these top 20%, when profiled, are a map of the people you should be targeting.
Profile the bottom 20% and you probably have the opposite... the profile of customer not to target if the time and resources spent doing so are at the expense of your top 20% profile.
Execution
Even when you're consciously choosing to target certain customers, it's very common not to reflect this in the marketing support material, like brochures, letters, websites and advertising.
Do not worry if you fail to appeal to the wrong people because you have adequately targeted the right people.
There are 3 executions to re-evaluate from this perspective...
1. Headlines
Make sure they target your top 20% profile, and the needs and language of that profile.
2. Website Homepage
These days, your homepage is your retail front and Yellow Pages listing rolled up into one critically important reference. Make sure it targets the right people
3. Offers
Your offers are the instrument of response-generation. These must be appeals that work to gain your chosen profile.
...Focus on the right customer and the same expenditure can yield more revenue per dollar.
Mistake #3: Failing To Know Your Customer's Needs...
Our own estimate suggests that only about 20% of businesses have an adequate understanding of their customers' needs.
So despite your knowledge and success to-date, there's a one in five chance that you do not know enough about three aspects of your customers... their likes, their dislikes and their unmet wish-list.
But you're in good company... the other three in every five!
There are two reasons why businesses fail to understand their customers' needs...
1. They assume that transacting with customers is enough to gain an understanding of them, and that the very transaction itself is proof of an understanding.
2. They assume that their customers are not changing, or that competitors aren't changing.
Both of these are wrong.
There are two ways to investigate your customers... Qualitative research and Quantitative research.
Qualitative research is where you interview them, and your questions are open-ended, allowing deeper and varying answers. These interviews give you depth, but it's difficult and time-consuming, so you tend not to get a lot of people through this style of research.
Quantitative research is about surveys. You structure your questions around options, lists, rankings and other ways of giving limited choices.
It forces your customers to decide from answers that are meaningful to you.
It's easier to get a lot of people through this style of research. You get more breadth and less depth.
There are three aspects of your customers to proactively investigate.
Likes... Find out what your customers like about you, your product or service, transacting with you, and what they like about your competitors.
Dislikes... Obviously what they do not like about you and your competitors.
Unmet wish list... The things that they wish a company like yours would do or offer, but which nobody is doing or offering.
When you know these, you'll virtually have a blueprint to getting and keeping customers.
Mistake #4: Failing To Have A Clear Unique Selling Proposition...
A USP is a powerful marketing asset, but first let's define it.
A slogan is a catchy phrase that attempts to position a company. A USP is different because it makes, or implies, a real proposition... it invites action. What's more, it attempts to sell in that suggestion. And further still, it attempts to be unique, different from any other slogan, offer or positioning.
In other words more, it is a unique selling proposition.
There are universally accepted examples of well-conceived USPs...
"Absolutely positively overnight" from Fedex
"Fresh, hot pizza in 30 minutes or it's free" by Dominos
"Melts in your mouth, not in your hand" by M&Ms
A good USP is a powerful instrument both internally and externally...
Externally
1. A USP makes a great headline.
2. A USP replaces a slogan with something more sales-directed
3. A USP gives your sales team a core offer and positioning to repeat and focus on in their meetings with prospects.
4. A USP can be executed in any medium... websites, letters, emails, ads, displays, radio, TV, and more.
Internally
1. A USP becomes the central KPI to which all aspects of the business can be evaluated.
2. A USP becomes a significant ingredient in the focus and content of position descriptions.
3. A USP makes a great addition to your mission and vision.
There are steps to deriving a good USP, and they're important to get right. Call us to talk about them in detail, but in brief they are...
1. Research your market and competitors
2. Conduct a SWOT analysis
3. Identify all key issues resulting from these
4. Derive the ingredients of a USP
5. Word-smith the USP
6. Test the USP
It's an old concept, a difficult one to get right... but a USP is a powerful tool.
Mistake #5: Failing To Test Your Idea First...
A golden rule to apply to your marketing efforts is this...
"Never spend on an untested idea what you can't afford to lose"
That simple advice often gets ignored.
Reckless spending on ideas that seem right but are flawed in ways not immediately apparent is a prime waster of time, money and opportunity.
Testing on a sample of prospects, or in a small ad first, or with a few sales staff only... avoids such losses.
What can be tested?
Everything can be tested, but the main things to test are these...
Are you targeting the right prospects? Try targeting different prospects.
Are you using the right headline? Try alternative headlines and see which works best.
Are you using the right offer and call-to-action? Experiment and record which offers work with which targets.
Are you approaching through the right media? Perhaps your targets are better approached by letter, advertising, telemarketing or email.
Other than these factors, everything really can be tested... copywriting details, colours, formats of brochures, methods of postage and so on.
Importantly, you should only test one variable at a time. Testing more than one will render your experiment difficult to learn from... which variable changed the result?
Fear
Fear of testing is understandable, since it consumes time and money, but the gains and savings are significant.
You don't know what your marketing is capable of achieving unless you experiment. A valuable marketing process could be lying undiscovered in your business.
And you save wasted monies by testing small, first.
Accumulate a log of what works and what doesn't. Grow your arsenal of proven methods, words, pitches and procedures.
Testing discovers better ways and avoids unnecessary losses.
Mistake #6: Failing To Make An Explicit Offer...
A lot of ads, letters and brochures fail to make a real offer.
An offer is simple... It promises some kind of explicit benefit.
The best place for an offer is in the headline. Headlines are 80% of the effectiveness of the letter, brochure, website or ad that contains them.
There are four styles of headline, all of which work...
News announcements
News-style alerts have good readership. You can phrase a good headline in a news style and it will have good impact.
For instance...
As Reviewed In Courier Mail and The Australian: "Self-Funding" Metro Inn Apartments so secure and profitable they literally cost investors nothing to own
Curiosity- evoking
These headlines arouse curiosity and often start with the word 'How'. They ask a question or suggest something, and open up the reader's mind to enquire for the answer.
For instance...
Can You answer 'Yes' To These 4 Healthy Home Questions?
Self-interest promises
These appeal to pure self-interest on the part of the reader. It shamelessly speaks in 'what's in it for me' language.
For instance...
This Is Your View Eating Breakfast At Aanuka Beach Resort, While... You Are Enjoying Your Annual 2 Weeks Stay At A Massive 80% Discount And A Few Metres Away Your Villa Is Making You A Huge 8.5% Net Return
Quick benefit promises
These suggest something quick and easy... a no-brainer for something beneficial and gained without trouble or too much commitment
For instance...
Everything you need to know about buying or selling motels, management rights, caravan parks and hotels
All of these headlines worked well. Make sure your marketing makes an offer.
Mistake #7: Failing To Justify Your Offer...
This warrants a separate mention from the importance of making any offer at all.
Having a great offer can attract attention and convert browsers into readers.
But if an offer seems too good to be true, it may not be acted upon...
...Unless you can justify it.
It's critically important to explain a little of the science behind why a terrific offer is:
1. Able to be made
2. Being made to 'me' the reader
3. Time-expired (valid only until a certain date)
Let's look at these three components of 'believability...
Why this?
If you have an aspect of your product, service or business and operational processes that is unique, and it enables you to achieve something superior to your competition, explain it.
Revealing this detail will lend credibility to your offer.
Why me?
Explain - or conceive a believable explanation for - why you are targeting them, and why they have received your offer. Were they most like another customer who has benefits? Are they members of an association or category that entitles them to something?
Why now?
Having a time-expiry on your offer is a way of getting action secured before your prospect forgets.
But justify the time expiry with a less you-focused reason.
Perhaps you have limited stock of the product being offered. Perhaps your diary suggests certain times, only, are available at the moment.
Have, or develop, a plausible reason why the offer has a very real expiry date.
Mistake #8: Failing To Educate Your Customers...
This is one of the most commonly occurring mistakes we see, particularly in companies that sell complex or expensive products and services.
There are usually multitudes of hidden aspects to your product, service, or business.
Sometimes, these are so taken for granted by the business, so ignored and undervalued... that it's easy to forget the market would be fascinated by them.
In a well regarded story from the 1920's, advertising copywriter Claude Hopkins cites his meetings with Schlitz beer in the United States...
Every beer company was shouting 'pure' in their advertising. But nobody was explaining the science behind it.
Hopkins was taken for a tour of their facility, and was impressed by what he saw.
"I saw plate-glass rooms where beer was dripping over pipes, and I asked the reason for them.
They told me those rooms were filled with filtered air, so the beer could be cooled with purity.
I saw great filters filled with white-wood pulp. They explained how that filtered the beer. They showed how they cleaned every pump and pipe, twice daily, to avoid contaminations..."
He was amazed, and said as much, to which they remarked "But every beer is made this way".
But the market didn't know that.
Hopkins educated their market, revealed truths that had been under-valued, under-utilised, and not publicised.
The market then understood how Schlitz beer was made.
Schlitz went from number 5 to number 1.
There are very possibly aspects of what you sell, or how you go about it, that should be more widely known.
Educate your market, and they will understand what makes you different. Knowing that, they are more likely to favour you over your competitors.
Mistake #9: Failing To Make Transacting Easy...
You might be targeting the right people, making a great offer, educating your market... but undoing all that good work with poor transaction.
Do your customers like to order online, but you can't offer that?
Do they hate the paperwork involved in buying from you?
Do they wonder why your invoices don't have a full product description for the bookkeeping?
Does your secretary have an irritating phone manner?
The way you transact is important to the customer experience of buying your product or service.
How straight-forward it is to do business with you can break an otherwise perfect ensemble of product and promotion.
Here's our suggestion on what to include in an evaluation of your transaction...
Method
Ask your customers how they prefer to transact with you. Evaluate the responses, and if a meaningful proportion like to transact in a certain way, consider using it. Bending people to a manner of transaction they don't like can be detrimental to business if your competitors aren't so stubborn.
Speed and availability
Find out when your customers like to contact, enquire, order, confirm or visit. If you are not open or accessible in these times, you may similarly be inconveniencing them.
Red-tape
Remove as much of the paperwork as possible. Or consider moving some of the paperwork to other parts of the transaction... spacing it all out can be a clever way of adhering to red tape in 'stealth mode'.
Reporting
How to your customers like their invoices and statements looking? Do they like it written or electronic? Try to provide what enough customers want.
Personality
Empower your staff to smile, be pleasant and enjoy their work. Recruit on attitude and train in aptitude.
Fun
Lastly, don't be afraid to add some component of fun.
Mistake #10: Failing To Solicit A Response...
A mistake common in personal selling is to be slow to ask for the sale.
'Closing' can be difficult.
You wouldn't forgive for too long a salesperson who couldn't close, but a lot of marketing materials get through making the same mistake.
And while a salesperson may fail in 2 or 10 visits before you implement corrective action, a letter, ad or commercial may knock on 10,000 doors and fail to ask for the sale.
That's an expensive mistake.
There is a rough but valuable acronym to remember in your marketing material... AIDA.
Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action.
Action is explicitly asking the reader, listener, browser or viewer to do what it is you hope they'll do.
So after you have caught their attention, delivered your education and aroused their desire for your product or service... tell them exactly what to do to get it.
A heartening fact is that prospects don't like selling themselves. They enjoy being respectfully led to the sale.
Our suggested path to take...
Know what action you want
Decide what it is you want your prospect to do. If it's simply to contact you, that's ok. If it's to visit you, that's ok, too. But know in your mind exactly what you require them to do as the 'very next thing'
Ask them to do it
Ask your prospect explicitly to take that action. Don't merely supply a telephone number, but actually ask them to use it and ring you.
Give them the information
Supply them with whatever information they'll need to take the action... your address, contact details, opening hours, and other pertinent information.
Lastly, a tip... have a cheat-sheet you use to check your marketing material for details like contact information, website addresses and correct emails.
Mistake #11: Failing To Grow The Value Of Your Customers...
Once you have a customer on board, they are your most valuable asset.
If you've made it to this point, you've invested heavily in getting that customer on board.
That customer is now an asset to whom you must apply ethical leverage... and nurture them to be worth more to you over time.
There are two main ways to do this...
1. Get them spending more
2. Get them transacting more
Let's quickly review some ideas for these...
Up-selling, cross-selling and add-selling
Up-selling is when you sell more of whatever the customer came in to buy.
Cross-selling is where you sell an alternative to what they came in for, but which still satisfies the real need the customer had in the first place.
Add-selling is where you sell something in addition to what they came in for.
Selling other people's products and services
Consider ways to extend your core product or service to complementary ones that are related. Like convenience products in a petrol station.
Bundling
Try bundling different products and services. Hampers are the original way of bundling.
Referrals
Referrals should not be accidents. Every transaction should be as customer-lavishing as possible, so you can legitimately ask your customer to recommend people to you.
Direct Reminders
An example of this is what good hairdressers and dentists do all the time, by pre-booking your next appointment and even reminding you when it's approaching.
Loyalty and rewards
Loyalty systems can be simple or expensive. A simple repeat purchase card that gets punched, stamped or signed is enough. But magnetic or barcode based systems are also returning dividends.
There are other ways of growing the value of your customers... feel free to experiment, but certainly include growing customer-value on your agenda.
Mistake #12: Failing To Stick With Proven Ideas...
The last mistake businesses are often prone to making is almost invisible...
It's very simply failing to stick with an idea that has worked.
Testing new ideas does not fly in the face of this mistake. You should be testing ideas against a control, and that control can be any idea that has worked.
But it is criminal to grow tired of a campaign, or change campaigns upon new agencies or staff being appointed... if the old campaign is working and meeting all requirements.
It's tempting to grow tired of the same creative, and it's tempting for new staff to seek to make a mark.
But neither of these are an excuse for ceasing a campaign that is working well.
You should continue to use a campaign until something better comes along, or circumstances dictate a change of course.
Henry Ford, the car magnate, famously grew tired of a campaign and lamented, "Why don't we try something new?"
His staff then shyly pointed out that the campaign hadn't even made it to the public yet.
He was simply too used to discussing and seeing it within the company.
Fight the urge to abandon an old idea without reason.
