In the ever-changing world of business, adapting to meet the evolving needs of your customers is crucial for sustained success. Regardless of what kind of business you run, understanding and shifting your marketing strategy can significantly impact your growth trajectory.
Making sure you are clear about your marketing allows you to effectively use your marketing dollars without wasting them. It’s about truly understanding what the buyer looks like and desires.
Unfortunately, many businesses spend money with a shotgun approach rather than aiming at a specific target. Aiming at a specific target not only saves money but also gets better results. Additionally, truly understanding your target will give you clarity in ad spend, messaging, conversations, and even the way you or your sales team approach prospects.
Identifying Your Representative
Voting is something we value highly; we want the right people to represent us. But who would you vote into the office of “My Ideal Customer?”
Many would say that the first step in shifting your marketing strategy is to clearly identify your target audience. This involves creating detailed profiles of your ideal customers through delving into aspects such as demographics, interests, values, and purchasing behaviors. They believe that by understanding who your customers are and what drives their decisions, you can tailor your marketing efforts to resonate more deeply with them.
While I completely agree that you need to do all this, I would like to offer an additional approach. Pick ONE product or service and ONE representative customer to start with as you consider shifting your marketing.
Your Visual Buyer Profile
Now you are starting to get a solid picture of the actual people who will be excited by
your offering. I remember talking with a radio host at a Radio Group I once managed. “I talk to Betty,” he said, “She lives at the top of the hill, has two kids, and works for an internet company as a graphic designer. I have a clear picture in my mind of what she looks like.”
He knew he was talking to a lot more people than Betty, but picturing talking to Betty at the other end of the radio helped him be personable and become one of the top announcers in the city.
Your business needs to “talk” to the right person. How they live, what they watch and read, how they live their lives is of great importance. This allows for the marketing (which is really communication) to be truly relevant. You may end up with many specific profiles, but you will have clarity of how to move forward with your marketing in each product or service category. Here is an example of a Buyer Profile for a company that provides Meal Plans and delivery.
To help you think like the radio host, create your own visual like the one to the right. This is a wonderful way to visually portray who your ultimate buyers are. This is not only helpful for marketing but also for everyone in the business to be conscious of who we are aiming to serve with our products or services.
Dig Deep for Better Understanding
As you dig into this process. Think about WHY they buy. What is their need and what is their motivation behind the need? Their motivation helps you understand how to promote your products or services most effectively to them. For example, if they want a better-quality product because they like things to look nice, that’s one thing. If they want a better-quality product to reflect their own values, that’s another.
As you are asking these questions, feel free to branch out with your questions like:
What experiences does our ideal customer for this product prefer? Practical, Energetic, Emotional or Relational?
What are their key values?
What form of media do they most engage with?
(Traditional, Social and Non-traditional)
As you continue to uncover avatars for your product or services that are struggling to grow, Sally Winward might speak to you that she prefers one certain kind of approach over another because of how she is wired. This insight allows you to really think through how you connect with them. Sally spends half an hour on LinkedIn during lunch time in the middle of the week and notices who supports the local Girl Scouts group. Sometimes a simple marketing campaign that truly reaches the target is much better than a complex one that appears to. This insight allows you to craft messages and promotions that directly address their needs and preferences.
Mapping the Buyer Journey
Another factor is to understand your prospects journey—from initial awareness to final purchase. All too often I hear business owners talk about a specific campaign and say – that did not work. But what stage of the journey was it meant to address?
For most complex B2B sales for example, buyers go through a number of stages including:
· Unconscious Attraction
· Conscious Recognition & Research
· Sampling & Prioritizing
· Critical Evaluation
Depending on your product or services you may have to map out each stage of this journey and evaluate how well your current marketing strategies are guiding customers through this process. What message and media mix are you using at each stage?
As you work through this, identify any bottlenecks or areas where customers may drop off, and strategize ways to streamline and enhance their experience of the pathway to your business.
Optimizing Your Strategic Shift in Marketing
Now it is time to put all this together and recreate your best prospects journey to doing business with your company. Some questions to ask yourself as you walk through this are:
· What is the simplest way to rebuild this?
· What needs to stay, go or have further evaluation?
· What is the biggest issue and how can we solve this?
· What is blocking the headwaters of the buyer journey as close to the beginning as possible?
· What is our true point of difference with Sally Winward that she will talk about at Girl Scouts?
Adapting your business to meet the evolving needs of your suspects, prospects, and customers is crucial for sustained success. Picking a specific product or service and identifying a single representative customer is a fresh place to start as you consider shifting your marketing. This person can stand as a focus for messaging, advertising and even product delivery. Sally Winward is a lot more relatable to most people than a 42-year-old mother of 2 in Alpharetta.
This strategic approach not only maximizes your marketing ROI but also fosters stronger customer relationships and a personal approach to both your prospects and customers for rapid business growth.
Stephen E. Wright
Practical Business Growth Consulting