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Are you in marketing? Let me give you a hint: The answer is YES.
Marketing is not a department—it’s a mindset. If you want your company to succeed (Hint: YOU DO), you must consider marketing a key part of what you do every day.
Marketing isn’t just a matter of mailing out flyers or designing ads. Marketing is about representing your company to the outside world. Everything you do that reaches customers and potential customers—i.e. THE WORLD—is marketing.
So what is good marketing? Think about fortune cookies and horoscopes. These things are miracles of marketing. They predict something that happens to almost everyone every day (“You will meet someone new”) but somehow make you feel like they were written just for you.
Well, sometimes. That worked a lot better when I was ten. Nowadays I’m not likely to be impressed unless every Sagittarius on Earth is run over by a guy named Keith on the same Tuesday afternoon.
On the personal level, I’d like to see a fortune cookie that starts off, “Hey Roxanne! Gorgeous blouse.” I’d look down (“How did it know?!”) and then keep reading. How could I not?
Modern marketing works the same way. Gone are the days when vague messages pitched to “Sir or Madam” have any real chance of success. Yet most companies are still using the global marketing, getting a predictably low ROI, then doing it again. And again.
If you insist on spending your resources marketing to everybody, go ahead—but know that 80 percent of those touches will TAKE money from your company’s bottom line instead of adding to it.
You’ll get a far better return by taking the time to identify the other 20 percent—those who will put money INTO your pocket. Do it by identifying three or four very specific markets you’d like to pursue—possibly based on past successes—then tightly tailoring tactics and messages for each of them.
A given commercial lender might decide to target fast-growth manufacturers, service businesses with fewer than 50 employees, and family-owned and operated businesses. A given lawn-care business might have identified busy two-income families with kids as one of its best targets. It could be just about anything, but it must be a specific group with shared and identifiable needs and concerns.
Once you’ve identified the markets, don’t go off half-cocked. Slapping a person’s name on the top of a global message does not a tailored message make. The content itself must be tailored, not just the form. Do the legwork to learn their concerns, their habits, and their preferred means of contact—THEN hit them with a focused, personalized message that will wow them like no horoscope ever could.
If you don’t take my advice…I foresee grave difficulties in your future. Possibly involving a one-armed man, but that part’s fuzzy.