5 Simple Rules to Maximise Marketing Impact

Marketing isn’t difficult.  The problem is that most people overcomplicate it.  It isn’t a dark art.  It is just a really logical way to approach how you  present your business. 

Some people build it up to be this really complicated discipline that they don’t understand.  In reality they just have little interest in the process (the work) – they just want to see the fruits of their labour (the results)! 

This article is a quick 3-minute read which could really help to improve how you market your business with potentially no outside intervention required.

1. Simplicity is key

No-one in life likes “complicated”.  Simple things are easier to process and understand quickly.  Marketing communications needs to be understood quickly.  You may only have a split second to grab attention and make an impact.

Too many businesses overcomplicate their offering.  Review how you are currently presenting yourself and ask…“could this be simplified”? If it can, strip it back.  No jargon, no acronyms, no University degree required to understand the language used. 

Simple is good.

2. Decide who you are speaking to

Sounds obvious, but this is the most common marketing mistake businesses make.  They try and speak to everyone.  The problem is that everyone is different.

Work out who are the best profile of customer for your business and define them as tightly as you can.  You will only have a finite amount of marketing budget so you need to make sure you are spending it on talking to the right people.

Anyhow, until you know who you are speaking to, how do you know what to say?  If you are struggling to define your target market – take a look at where your business has come from over the last 3 years.  Who are your best customers?  I assume that you would probably like more of these?

3. Understand what your customers want

Too many business models are evolved around what the business owner wants to do, or thinks is the best way of doing it.  This is fundamentally flawed.

The most successful business are those that understand what their customers want, and build their model around delivering this.  Obviously key to this is point 2 above – knowing who your ideal customers are.

Do you fit your target audience profile? If not, its irrelevant what you like.  Ask your prospective customers what they would like – then focus on delivering it!

4. Don’t stop at the sale

Marketing is not solely a method of generating awareness and interest that leads to enquiries and ultimately sales.

Yes, this is often the initial process, but the most successful businesses at marketing understand that their job doesn’t stop at the sale.

Converting a cold prospect is probably the most time consuming and expensive element of marketing – so why stop there? You already have done the hard work and invested into acquiring a customer. Now you have an opportunity to market to an existing customer, much more cost effectively, who already knows how good you are (consider up-selling, cross-selling, repeat purchases, referral opportunities) .

5. Be consistent

This is across everything you do.

• Keep doing stuff. Without input you can’t expect an output.  So no marketing activity generally leads to no results.  Test and measure what you do to make sure you are doing the right stuff. Keep doing the things that work. Stop the things that don’t.
• Make sure there is consistency around your brand and communications.  It is unlikely that a prospective customer is going to engage with you the first time they come across your brand.  Make sure your brand is consistently represented and that the messaging continually hammers home what you do, your values and what makes you different.  Chopping and changing direction and messaging ultimately leads to customer confusion.
• Excellent levels of service delivery.  In order to maximise potential value from a client you need to ensure that you offer a consistent service.  Otherwise that customer acquisition investment you made will be wasted in the long term.

As you can see, marketing isn’t rocket science, yet so many get it wrong.  Follow these five simple rules and you should see a significant uplift in performance.

• If you don’t have the time, resource or desire to do all of the above then considering getting some help to make this happen.  This could be a full-time internal role (either recruited or training an existing member of staff) or outsourcing to a marketing consultant to help make this happen.

• If you would like to discuss any of the above points, or marketing in general, please don’t hesitate to get in contact.