Question: How do I know where to put my money?
Answer: A lot of people telling you should be doing this and you should be doing that and bamboozling you with BS.
When, how & why? It’s a real challenge to get right.
The overarching guidance and starting point is your Target Audience.
One of the founding quotes from Apple was “know your customer better than they know themselves”
That’s really getting crystal clear of who that target audience is, which tells you who they are, and it tells you where they are. Where they are drives the channels that you’re going to use to market to them.
In its simplest format, with marketing, is that you really only have two options:
One option: It is to be there when they are searching. Whether that be there from a physical retail perspective, in shopping centres or online with google or YouTube.
Or second thing is: Interrupt me – using things like direct mail, interrupting my day – social, running ads, you’re interrupting my day.
Search has a much higher intent for a person to purchase, whereas with interrupting there is too much spam in this world. If you’re going to do that, you’ve got to get it right with value.
All your ‘comms’ pieces need to be demonstrating the value you can bring, and not spamming with crap – you’re just going to waste my time and piss me off.
Ultimately whichever one you’re going after based on your target audience, first thing is to focus. What’s going to give you maximum return for your buck? Let’s own that space. Let’s get a scalable, duplicatable, replicable model that’s going to drive some good revenue you for you.
No matter what you do, last piece of advice is your website. Every single business in this world needs a really great website, I don’t care who you are, what you’re selling or what you don’t think you’re selling, your website is now the window to the world. Don’t skimp on it.
Question: If I want to do a special offer or something to try and drum up some business, are you saying I shouldn’t do that?
Answer: I’m not saying you can’t do it, but specials means loss of margin, it means you’re cutting your price, it means you’re competing on price, which you do that and the next guy does it, you cut another 10%, he cuts another 10% and it’s a race to the bottom of the barrel.
Our view is we are much better working on how we can demonstrate more and more value that people are prepared to pay for. So, price is bottom of the barrel – good luck with it. It’s really about how we get value communicated to your target audience is how you win long term.
Your value proposition is central to your whole business.
Your website oozes it, the call centre has got to ooze it, the product, the packaging, everything is a clear communication point of the value you are going to generate for your customers.
