Marketing to all 5 steps of the buying process

Some folks ask how fast their marketing will turn into sales & ultimately, revenue. I reply by asking three questions:

What is your time to sale?

What is your level of awareness within your targeted segments?

How many happy customers/clients have you created over time?
Usually, I get puzzled looks as a reaction. A question that they percieved to be simple, was just uncovered as more complicated than they thought.

There is a principle that's taught in business school - one satisfied customer can yield up to 10 more customers in less time than you could build them one by one, all by yourself. Let's explore the "Why":

There are 5 stages to building a satisfied customer. They range from some one having no-awareness of your business to having a full blown evangelist that sings your praises from the roof tops. If Branding is done correctly, you'll only have to go through the initial stages of marketing once or twice to build the initial base of satisfied customers.

This is a foundational principal behind Straight Line Marketing. It helps ensure that you have the strategies necessary to take a potential customer through each stage of the customer satisfaction/buying process.

#1 Awareness:
People MUST be aware of your product/service category, your business and its capability. They buy from you if they don't know you exist. It takes seeing something 7 times seeing or hearing something before the majority of humans will remember it. You must put your company out there it ways that the public will see or hear of you often and repetitively. That's not an opinion, it's science. However, if you accomplish this, many potential targets may still be largely indifferent as they may not see a need for your product or service.

#2 Interest:
Something happens in a potential customer's life or business for them to move from the awareness phase to the interest phase. You must have raised their interest proactively. To raise their interest, you have to push their buttons... to do that efficiently, you must know them. To recap - a potential customers cannot get to the interest phase if you haven't raised awareness of your brand and/or offering and when doing that, you have to raise their interest by targeting your message to their lifestyle, preferences, needs, etc. This is the point of a process where we would qualify a target as a warm lead and nurture them carefully to build their interest into hungry desire.

#3 Desire:
This is the hottest and most volatile point of the marketing and sales process - if you can take a customer through this journey and then identify when they have clearly made it into the "desire" phase of the sales process, then all you have to do is close the deal. But be warned, at this point you have done all of the hard work to build a client's awareness and interest in your product or service BUT if your product or service is not desireable enough (or your competiton is more convincing at this point) then you will lose the sale to someone else and all your effort will be wasted. You must be able to deliver on what you've promised in the first two stages.

#4 Action:
This is the point of the sales process where a customer parts with their money. At this point the decision has already made. Here's a good example of this stage in action: you've heard how men don't "window shop" - - well, when men, traditionally, go into a store, they already know what they are going to buy and how much they are willing to pay for it. If you have built awareness of your top-notch product or service and managed to hold on throughout the process constantly nurturing your lead with care, I would hope that you would be closing your sale here. The trick here is to make this stage of the process as easy as possible. You already have them, don't lose them.

#5 SATISFACTION:
Now this part is most important, once you've gotten a customer through to this point, from a marketing stand point. The reason businesses strive for satisfied customers and not just paying customers is that a satisfied customer is more likely to take the initial step of raising awareness out of your equation for the next round of customers. A satisfied customer will sits around with their connections and makes a recommendation to their peer at a time when their peer is interested and has a need thereby cutting the time investment of the first three stages down substantially. Meaning that they can multiple customers quicker than the natural cycle starting with stage #1.

The sales cycle is intrinsic to every business. You won't invest in marketing and be rewarded overnight, but if you understand the process you are investing in, it can be a much more rewarding journey, as you wont be tempted to give up half way there. Know that it takes time because you are having to lead potential customers on this journey. But if you are proactive and use a proven process like Straight Line Marketing, you can be assured that it will be the quickest that it can be, the most efficient, and the most effective because you are investing in doing it the right way.... scientifically.

Let Reformation Productions help you through the marketing process as a local business. Call Rachel Bennett, Director of New Business, at 404.862.8814.

Branding As Strategy

Few local business owners have the time and resources available to dedicate to their branding they way that big corporates do...at least up to they same level. But there are plenty of things that larger corporations do well that small-business owners should consider implementing as they strive for long-term survival:

1. Establishing strong brand positioning

Defining a market position is the most critical step in developing a brand. You must know who you are before you can get to where you want to be. Brand positioning characterizes the way a company wants its target audience to think about its brand. It is the core message you want to deliver in every medium, and it creates clarity, consistency and continuity in the way the organization speaks to the market. Essential to an effective positioning statement is the concept of narrowing rather than broadening a company’s focus. The secret to a good brand-positioning strategy is a clear message that talks about your strengths and explains to customers why your product is the best in your category or industry. Reformation Productions offers what we call a Identification Session as one of the first steps in the Straight Line Marketing process. This process is so important and so impactful that we offer it at a discounted rate to new clients. As we go through this long, intense session, 90% of our new clients gain a full understanding as to what Straight Line Marketing is all about and how it can work to grow their business.

2. Using market research to create a strategic plan

This is what we call the LISTEN stage. When most of us think of market research, we think of statistics, focus groups and expensive surveys. In most cases, that is overkill. Market research needs to answer only a few key questions — the simpler, the better. Big businesses take feedback and apply it to a strategic plan. They evaluate sales and segment performance, predict sales growth, compile market trends and consumer insights, identify key drivers from the previous year’s successes and failures, set firm marketing objectives for the coming year, estimate costs and craft tactical programs and marketing initiatives to achieve those objectives. Good planning allows companies to continuously measure, refine and optimize their marketing mix. You should demand that all programs have financial benefits and amplify sales. Spend wisely, and know your cost per generated lead.

3. Everything you do communicates, so be consistent across all materials and every aspect of the brand

The perception of your company and brand is defined by the interactions people have with your company and your communications. Your message must be consistent and compelling at all points of contact with customers. Take a look at any coupon, print ad, television commercial or Web site for IBM Corp. Every message is marked by a vivid blue color, graphic elements influenced by the geometric shape of the logo, a single-minded tagline, uniform font type in headlines and the same tone across all printed material. We cannot express how important consistency in communications is to your success. This is part of the THINK stage in Straight Line Marketing. It's evaluating everything from the two previous stages and turning it into a campaign concept that incorporates the right brand messaging.

4. Being unique is crucial, even if you’re coming in second

Companies that grab market share first often grab the glory, but they aren’t always the last one standing. At one time, The Procter & Gamble Co. was second to Union Carbide Corp. in marketing disposable diapers. Dell Inc. unseated Compaq Computer Corp. by marketing to the upcoming college generation. The secret to second-mover advantage: You can’t propose just a me-too idea; you need a unique angle to spin. Me-too businesses rarely survive. They usually end up in price wars because they don’t have anything unique that establishes value in the minds of their prospects. They are left with only one competitive weapon: price. Unless you have a significant cost advantage over your competitors, you will lose. We'll help you determine what your edge will be as part of the IDENTIFY stage.

5. Speak to the consumer and create value

Does your marketing material directly address the value of doing business with your company? Can it answer any consumer’s basic question, “What’s in it for me?” Some companies forget communication is about getting consumers to see brand benefits for themselves. To get that across, a brand must speak from the consumer’s point of view, not the marketing department’s. Remove all those meaningless benefits from your Web site and other communications materials. Replace them with the added value customers are after. Determining which marketing tools you should be using is part of the SPEAK stage. The tools you select, the programs you develop, everything from your website down to your listing in the yellow pages or your ad in the Neighborhood News should be crafted on purpose and with meaning.

Let Reformation Productions help your business function with the expertise and experience of the big corporations. Call our new business team at 404.862.8814 or visit us online at www.ReformationProductions.com today.

Marketing is a system, not an event

Small business marketers love the chase. Love the new fangled way to make the phone ring. They love to think of a marketing promotion as a single event. But it's precisely this view of marketing that holds most small businesses back. They fall prey to the "marketing idea of the week" and never fully explore what it takes to create and build a completely functioning, consistently performing, marketing system.


In this article, we am going to outline the basic steps that any business can follow on the way to creating their very own marketing system. But first let's explore this word system in the context of marketing. Small business owners have no problem thinking systems when it comes to say, accounting or hiring. When it comes to marketing though, all bets are off. It's as if they are waiting for magic fairy dust to fall upon them with the next great marketing innovation.


Look, effective marketing is little more than creating and operating an effective marketing system. Now, when I use the word system I mean several things. 1) The system is documented - You can't have a system or a step in a system unless you write it down. 2) The system is built on sound marketing principals and 3) You constantly measure, innovate, and refine the system.


Okay, so on to the system building steps.


1) Narrow and define a target market - Small business owners love to say yes. "Sure we can do that." The next thing you know the target market is roughly anyone they think will pay them. You must commit to a narrowly defined target market and you must focus all of your attention upon serving that market like no one ever dreamed of. A narrow marketing focus might be - Estate Attorneys - as opposed to Law Firms.


At Reformation Productions, this is part of the IDENTIFY and LISTEN stages of the Straight Line Marketing process.


2) Discover and communicate a core message for that market - Until you can show how your firm is different and offers something unique, you will always compete on price. You must find a way to tell your newly defined narrow target market why you have something to offer that they value. Your core message might be - We show estate attorneys how gain all of the business they can handle - as opposed to: We help law firms.


This is also part of the IDENTIFY and LISTEN stages of the Straight Line Marketing process that we use at Reformation Productions.


3) Develop multiple forms of permission based lead generation - No one like to be sold to and more and more advertising is falling on numb ears and eyes. Your lead generation system must be built on several fronts, such as public relations, referral marketing, strategic partnerships, and targeted advertising. Your lead generation message must offer the target market a reason to want to know more. Forget about the sale, look for ways to build trust.


This is brings in the THINK and CREATE stages of the Straight Line Marketing process.


4) Construct a lead conversion and customer reselling process - No amount of leads in the world will help your business if you don't efficiently turn those leads into clients. You must have a plan that maps out what you will do when phone rings, when you make the sales call and when it's time to do more business with the clients you already have. Most small businesses completely ignore this aspect, but this is where the real success of marketing lies.


Reformation Productions offers this as a part of business consulting.


5) Create entertainment or educational based marketing and presentation materials - It's not just for the traditional, glossy sales brochure, you should use your marketing materials to teach how your firm is different, how you solve real problems, how you work, why you work, what you believe and your marketing will be much more successful. Your web site must come from this point of view as well.



This also comes out of the THINK and CREATE stages of the Straight Line Marketing process.


6) Define the most important marketing success indicators - Setting marketing goals for such things as leads, appointments, sales, phone calls, referrals, impressions, mentions and anything else you can think to measure is how you turn marketing into a game and how you keep score of the game. Everyone loves and game and the only way to improve something is to measure how well you are doing in the first place.


This is the piece we see ignored the most. We call it "tracking" or measuring your results. If our process had five stages it would be this one... we'd probably call it MEASURE or EVALUATE & REPEAT.


7) Build an annual marketing calendar and budget and stick to it - Once you have spent the time and energy to think through steps 1-6 you need to commit your plan to a marketing calendar and then allocate (or at least think about) the money it will take to implement your plan each year. Once you create a calendar it is much more likely that you will look at the tasks assigned to each month like a "to-do" list. So, instead of whining that you should do more marketing, you simply scratch each item off your list and plan for the next. It's an amazingly simple but effective device.


This is a major part of the THINK stage at Reformation Productions. After presenting our recommendations for marketing tools and strategies that we base on the information gathered during the IDENTIFY and LISTEN stages, we develop a strategic marketing plan that includes this calendar/chart.


Okay...now the last bit of advice.



Every system needs a champion. Either find someone in your organization who does little else but operate the system or hire marketing professionals like Reformation Productions and charge them with helping you develop, implement and run the system.


Properly fed and maintained, this little marketing system can become the engine that drives your firm's climb to the top.


John Jantsch and Reformation Productions

Contact us at Reformation Productions to discuss your business. 404-862-8814