4 PILLARS of modern marketing success
4
The new rules you need to win
{the hearts of your customers}
The rules of engagement have changed and customers’ expectations have soared to astronomical heights. But don’t despair; as a business owner this doesn’t mean you should throw in the towel and abandon hopes of pleasing your most demanding customers. It means that if you know how to navigate the new rules, you will be able to use this shift in consumer power to your advantage to stand out from the crowd, be remarkable and get noticed. Here’s how.
Consistency
Consistency is key, be it in branding (ie. how your logo appears) to the product line you offer to the timing and messaging of your ads. Consistency across your business is important for customers to distinguish you from competitors. It also sets a precedent of expectations, which in turn helps to build loyalty. If a customer knows what to expect when shopping in your store for example, they are more likely to feel comfortable and positive towards your business. Likewise, if a certain message is repeated time and again in advertising, the customer becomes familiar and comfortable with your brand. All of this works together to build loyalty.
Clarity
Just because something is clear and makes sense to you, doesn’t mean it makes sense to your customers (and potential customers). As business owners, it is easy to become so immersed in your work that you lose sight of the outside world – and how others see you. Therefore it is so important to have someone outside of your business review your messaging – be it a flyer or your entire website – from time to time.
The other part to ensuring clarity is you yourself must know what it is that you are doing and for whom. I find the best way to approach this is to think of the problem your business is solving and who is benefitting. This is essentially what is known as purpose or mission statement. By defining this, you will be able to better convey this to your best customers and potential customers. It is such a fundamental part of laying the groundwork to marketing success – so important in fact, that there is an entire exercise dedicated to it in this issue! See Defining your purpose on page 6.
Responsiveness
It’s no longer enough to provide standard customer service. People expect more. They demand more. But this is not an exercise in futility. I’ll let you in on a secret: it takes far less than you think to make people happy. Very happy. This is great news for your business because it means you need to do far less than you think for your business to stand out and become remarkable in the eyes of your existing and potential customers and potential customers. Some examples of going the extra mile (really, only going a few extra feet):
A word about TOUCH POINTS:
Touch points are defined as ANY and ALL points of contact a customer has with your business. It is therefore extremely important to consider all the ways a customer interacts with your business – and ensure that they are all working together to deliver the same messages, quality and service.