You've
been doing the tradeshows. You've been
spending on a PR agency. You've been
running the ads - both print and now
online. You've been doing direct mail
and now even direct e-mail. And yes,
you've also been doing telemarketing.
Some of these have been more successful,
others less. But somehow you feel that
you could do better.
You bet you could.
It is well known that people tend to
buy from people they know. Think about
your own personal experience with
purchases you make. Marketing gurus have
been calling it awareness, brand name
recognition, and relationships
marketing; the essence is the same -
people tend to buy from people they know
and trust.
I was at the local Barnes & Noble
store, when a man was looking for help
finding an American Girl book. Turned
out the man had no intention of buying a
book. He was looking for a place to buy
an American Girl doll, and was hoping to
find this information in one of the
books. As the clerk realized what the
man was looking for, she did not become
angry or disengaged. On the contrary,
she went out of her way to help the man
get the information he was looking for,
and sure enough, there was a phone
number at the back of the book.
You don't have to be a marketing
expert to figure out what this
experience did to the likelihood of the
man stepping into this Barnes &
Noble store next time he is looking
to purchase a book. Bookstores,
realtors, and other local merchants have
figured it out long ago: maintain
relationships with your customers,
provide them with valuable information,
make them know you and trust you, and
eventually they will buy from
you.
Now turn this fact around and look at
it from your point of view - the
marketer. What does it mean for you? It
means that before anybody buys from you,
they'd have to know and trust you.
If you want your customers to know
you, you should make an effort to know
them. No, you cannot go out to lunch
with each one of them. It also doesn't
mean that you pry on their privacy and
find out everything about them. You can
start getting to know your customers by
taking some very simple steps.
1. Build a target market database.
I assume you have already profiled
your target market general demographics,
such as SIC codes, geography, company
size, etc. Based on these profiles, you
can purchase an initial list of the
companies in your target market. Knowing
these companies by name is the first
step.
2. Engage in a conversation.
Now that you have the names of the
companies and maybe the names of some
decision makers within these companies,
you want to start a conversation. In
most cases, the most effective way to
communicate with these people is through
e-mail, but you have to get their
permission to use it.
How do you get permission? First, you
ask for it. Surprisingly enough, the
most cost effective way to do it is by
calling the people in your target
database. It will also help you clean up
the database in the process. Then, offer
valuable content so people want to get
information from you (a newsletter is a
great vehicle for establishing
permission, provided it is educational
and not just another sales pitch for
your company).
Consistency is key here. You want to
keep the conversation going, so you have
to keep providing valuable content and
find as many ways as possible to engage
the readers in a dialog (again, a
newsletter could be a great vehicle;
more about newsletters in one of the
upcoming issues).
3. Don't throw away the good
leads.
You may say "of course
not!", but I bet most of you do.
Here's a common scenario that takes
place in many companies I've seen: a
lead is generated through your marketing
campaign. Your sales person calls the
lead (as you can see later in this
newsletter, more often than not even
this doesn't happen, but let's assume
that's not your case...) She finds out
that the lead is interested but not
ready to buy yet. What are the chances
the sales people will contact this lead
again in 3 months? You get the
picture...
It's up to you, the marketing person,
to make sure these leads are kept at the
top of the funnel, stay active and
informed. You already know them, don't
be a stranger! Remember, the chances
that someone that already knows you will
buy from you are much higher than for
someone who is hearing about you for the
first time!
4. Don't throw away the bad leads.
This is less obvious, but it will
save you a lot of money down the road.
Every one of these names that is
absolutely not qualified and will never
be your customer is one that you never
want to spend another dollar on. But you
have to know them by name in order to
make sure you don't.
If you stay the course with these
simple four steps, you are constantly
qualifying and refining your target
market database, and at the same time
maintaining live dialogs with people you
know. But you're doing more than this:
you are turning your target market from
an elusive mass into a growing body of
people that have the highest probability
of buying from you - people who know you
and trust you.
This kind of target marketing is much
more effective than sporadic
initiatives, trying to always find
"new" leads and restarting the
process from scratch with every new
marketing campaign. Not only will you
get better results, but you can also
save a lot of money that you currently
spend on re-acquiring names of people
you used to know and re-qualifying
people you've already qualified.
If you haven't tried it yet, you owe
it to yourself. We'll be happy to hear
about your own target marketing
experience or to chat with you before
you get started.
