To take control of your business’s growth you have to build a trackable system that consistently tells your story and generates predictable revenue. Until a business successfully leverages their marketing, they will stay smaller and have to work harder for each sale.
The key to getting results from your marketing is to look at the big picture. You need to understand where your real marketing problem is and what needs to be in place for your system to work.
We created a framework that makes it easy to see where your marketing challenges lie and why so many struggle in marketing.
Psychologist Abraham Maslow created his Hierarchy of Needs, which stated that if someone was struggling to breathe, they wouldn’t be worried about the meaning of life. In marketing, we created a similar hierarchy. If you don’t understand your customer, you won’t be able to effectively create marketing tactics that work.
The High Peak Marketing Hierarchy of Marketing Needs
©High Peak Marketing 2009
Unfortunately, most businesses and marketers are obsessed with the tactics, the communication portion of the hierarchy. They seem to think that if they find the latest gimmick, they can cut through the noise. The real problem for most businesses is that they have not laid a proper foundation for their marketing and, from their consumers' perspective, they bring nothing new of value to the table.
An overview of the components of great marketing
1. Identify the problem/customer.
The foundation of all marketing is first to understand the problem your business solves in the marketplace, and then to understand exactly who has that specific problem and what they really want. This may sound obvious, but be careful; this is where a lot of business owners miss the mark. They think they know the problem, but is that the real problem? Often they need to drill down deeper. Business owners also miss the mark concerning their customers. For a business to be successful, they must understand each customer's fears, desires, concerns, and frustrations. If you don't regularly survey and speak with your customers, you may have trouble keeping up because those customers’ wants and needs change constantly.
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2. Create a unique solution or unique value.
This is the reason your business exists. If you bring unique value to your customer — even if it is an intangible feeling — you can control your growth. If you don’t make your value clear, you can only hope that your potential customers find you first, because if they find you second, they have no reason to switch. Almost all business owners think that they have unique value, but this is the biggest problem in marketing today. The brutal truth is, after working and consulting with thousands of small- and medium-sized businesses, very few actually have unique value, at least in the eyes of their consumer. This is true across the board, across industries, business to business or business to consumer. It only matters if your business is perceived as unique by your consumers.
To learn more about how you can develop and articulate your unique value sign up for our free newsletter in the sidebar.
3. Strategy.
To effectively move your potential clients (who likely have a limited budget) to action, you must have a clear, comprehensive strategy. Marketing is not just about putting out ads or campaigns; it's about having a comprehensive system that allows all of your marketing and communications to work together to get maximum results. A system becomes more than the sum of all its parts. If done properly, a finely tuned marketing system is a scalable, measurable, cash-generating machine.
Here is the High Peak Marketing cheat sheet for communication strategy:
HPM Strategy Cheat Sheet
©High Peak Marketing 2009
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4. Communicate.
This is where the rubber meets the road. It is also where most businesses get ahead of themselves. Now that the foundation has been built, you can easily develop specific, compelling communication messages that bring the highest response rates because they are part of a well thought out communication system. When creating an ad or a script, never forget that the ad's purpose is to generate a response. It is almost never appropriate to design an ad for the sole intention of getting people to remember you in six months — top of the mind awareness is overrated. This method is so common today, but the only reason to use it is if you like throwing money away. You can build awareness at the same time you drive response. They work together.
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5. Deliver.
Delivering your product or service is all about the experience you give your customer. If a customer has a bad experience, how many people will they tell? Everyone they can! If they have a good experience with you, how many people will they tell? None, because you gave them what they expected. What if you engineered an extraordinary experience for them? What if you gave them far more than they expected or have received in the past? Now they have something to talk about. Now they become raving fans. Great experiences come from planning and great culture.
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6. Follow up.
This is where the real leverage in marketing lies. Once you have spent the time and the money to bring in a customer, you can now reap the benefits. Once a customer is in your system, you must continue to nurture and develop that relationship. This is the most profitable marketing you can do. This is where you increase the frequency of your sales or the average sale. This is where you maximize your referrals or where you get customers into back-end, high-margin products or services. This area is often overlooked and is usually where there is money being left on the table.