For effective and memorable marketing messaging you need consistency, repetition and a meaningful message. You need to be able to relate to your audience and understand the problems your product or service solves for them.
Branding vs Sales Focussed Marketing Messages
It’s good to have an identity, for your customers to be able to relate to the meaning behind what you do. If your brand reflects your company culture, this brand will automatically be visible in every aspect of your customer visible outputs and be driven by your company vision. This is how people relate to you and start to think… ‘I trust this company to solve my problem’. But only long standing and well established companies get sales from brand marketing.
If you have growth intent and want marketing to be accountable for their spend, focus on the marketing that is part of a clear sales pathway. Brand marketing is important in the background and often misunderstood as a marketing message in itself rather than a reflection of the collective value that the company, the product, and their staff offer.
Most of the time, most companies are selling on their USP not their brand. Compelling values and brand identity generally won’t bring customers away from your competitors. The same is true for those companies selling disruptive products and services, brand messaging won’t make customers buy into a new concept. It’s the problem you solve and your USP that will see you through any and all key stages of growth.
Target Your Messages
Your messaging should be aimed at specific customer profiles. Going generic with your marketing messaging is as effective as throwing a tennis ball in the general direction of the court. For better outcomes, target your audience. It’s better to be hated by some and loved by some, than be meaningless to all.
Identify who your most likely buyers are, your lowest hanging and most lucrative market, and start here. Going generic with your marketing will make your life harder. Start by aiming for success within your easiest, most relevant, and lucrative customer profile. You can build a solid customer base and grow from there.
There are a multitude of marketing tools out there that help you to identify how to be seen by the largest number of people online. But if those messages don’t reach the right audience then your efforts have been wasted. You may be able to get lots of ‘likes’ for generic marketing based on popular current topics, but these are not the same as customer ‘buys’. When you want to scale fast, you need to build a streamlined and practical sales pipeline.
How to Know Your Customer
You have a wealth of resources at your fingertips to understand your customer needs, wants and frustrations. Talk to your customers, do online research, implement digital analytics. Talk to your customer facing staff. Use whatever resources you can access to get to know as much as you can about your customer, the problem you can solve and how they currently solve that problem without you.
It is a surprisingly common mistake to rush this research step. If you do, you will find the company has to rethink its messaging after having wasted money on rushing to go to market. Don’t assume you know what your customer wants, you are one team of people with a common way of thinking. Your customers will think differently to you, don’t get surprised by this or underestimate the impact of making assumptions based on the outlook of the team you have pulled together.
This is an ongoing process, keep talking to your customers. This is how your product developments and marketing messages stay relevant to your customers. Develop a culture in your company that continually encourages a desire for a better understanding of the needs of your customer. This will enable you to evolve and grow with the needs of your market.
Honesty and Hype, Reality Check for the Entrepreneur
Many scale ups are founded by ingenious entrepreneurs, they have created something great, sometimes complicated, and usually clever. They are charismatic and great at getting people round a table saying ‘wow, that’s amazing!’ This is different to having a sellable and scalable product.
The same is true for product developments that are led from the top down. If you have a great idea for a product development, it is important to seek a data driven reality check. Ideally you have a customer facing person (Product Manager or Account Manager) that knows your customer. They need to be trusted to share a well-informed customer perspective. This person is a critical part of guiding the direction of both product developments and marketing messaging. They can work across departments to ensure your company stays in touch with your customer.
If you have a strong USP and are in touch with your customer needs, all you need to do in your marketing messaging is be honest. If you want to keep growing your sales and get repeat customers, just be honest. Honesty is the best and most effective form of marketing. Some of the strongest USPs don’t need bells and whistles, they just need to clearly and honestly solve a problem for your customer.
COMMERCIAL Growth Specialist
Commercial Growth Specialist
