You get what you get because you do as you do.
Your customers reflect your marketing and your marketing reflects your customers
I’m not generally one for philosophical maxims but this one strikes a chord and I’ve heard this phrase, which was originally written by American novelist, Mark Twain: “if you only do what you’ve always done you’ll always get what you always got,” being applied in many ways – but the sentiment is consistent – if you do the same thing in business (or in your personal life come to think of it), the outcome is also likely to be the same.
Not a bad thing, some might say, if the actions are appropriate and the outcomes positive. But we all know that few businesses are either unwilling to entertain change, or capable of being introspective and therefore make do with being plain old average. Average, however, is not a word you would ever find in a company mission or vision statement or anywhere else in its literature! The face of business is represented through marketing activities which in turn mobilise the workforce to action, so it holds that the basis of your marketing thrust should sit on firm foundations.
Dangers of becoming an ‘average’ business
These foundations have to be built on a sound, fit for purpose data strategy if they are to challenge the dangers of becoming an ‘average’ business. So, I would like to apply my own humble analogy to Mr Twain’s words of wisdom with respect to marketing and in particular the underlying basis of customer understanding, targeting and personalisation in our ever changing, less than average world. Here we go.
Average businesses typify Mark Twain’s statement. They are not masters of their own destiny. They do not change in the face of the obvious. They do not understand their customers very well or understand the reasons why their customers buy from them, return to buy again or not. They scratch the surface of their relationship knowledge and use little empirical information to apply change dynamically and successfully. This may sound quite harsh, even disparaging of our business to business community but average, in my experience, does not convey forward thinking, innovation or outstanding achievement.
There is a misconception in business that if you do more of the same then this is likely to turn your fortunes around. For instance, you undertake an online mailing initiative, you decide what you are trying to communicate, come up with a picture to support your text and send it out to 10,000 addresses you extracted from your ‘prospect database’ and newly purchased unknowns. You live in the hope that, on the basis of cause and effect being a sound principle, you should get a percentage response. Sound familiar? You then resend your html mailer out again to trawl what you can at a later stage. The results you obtain are not great but as you expected.
Doing something differently takes conviction and commitment
What do you do? You arrange to do a few more campaigns later that year using the same approach and low and behold – what do you get back . . . nothing more than you expected the first time around. This is an over simplification, I admit, but it is a trap that many businesses fall into because it is easier to do the same thing and get the same results and blame the market or other factors for the poor performance. Doing something differently takes conviction and commitment and recognition that you can make huge steps forward through greater understanding of your customers and market. Cause and effect is a sound principle so you should consider how best to apply it intelligently. To bring about the change you seek consider doing something totally different and the results might inspire and surprise you!
Communication is becoming instant, diverse and ephemeral
If we stop and take a depth breath for a moment, we can see that marketing has succumbed to a digital age. Publishers are competing with online information sources and traditional advertising revenues are becoming harder to attract, email is competing with direct mail – the whole process of communication is evolving. Communication is becoming instant, diverse and ephemeral. The rate at which we are drifting towards this digital inevitability, which for many will render much of the old ways of conducting marketing null and void, is incredibly fast. Speed of access to information puts the customer in the driving seat, changing the dynamics of business. For these reasons – and there are many more – we need to consider how important customer data is in handing control back to your business.
The first question is simple enough. If you don’t know who you are selling to or who you should be selling to, how can you meet your goals? I’m being specific here – you might know which sector or general job role you are generally targeting but that doesn’t necessarily translate to having more than a modicum of customer understanding. Your techniques might include casting a broad net – a contact anyone can approach – and trust in a higher life force. You might even be lucky and have your prayers answered! But this unstructured approach is surely not sustainable and is destined to succumb to the uncompromising power of the market. If you want to take control and ensure you are doing everything you can do to raise your business from the ranks of the average, you might need to take a different tack.
Elevate your business to the ranks of excellence
As your data policy will ultimately dictate the direction of your marketing strategy and form the hub of customer insight it’s an obvious area to get right first and one that will elevate your business to the ranks of excellence! You can do this by centralising and developing your business to business database. Collect information from all the sources of interaction that occur with your customers including digital, telephone, web, sales, service, etc., and create detailed profiles that will form the dynamic data from which a unique customer insight can be formed.
What this will ultimately resemble is not just a list of details giving the customers a basic business structure including contacts, etc., but a comprehensive inventory of data regarding products and services bought, value, frequency, profitability, share of potential business and much more. This data can be further enriched by comparing the data against an aggregated database to ensure the quality, accuracy and depth of the data.
Customer segmentation provides a next step to group customers into logical categories which empowers you to develop the best ways to engage with each group through a process of customer engagement mapping. This allows the personalisation you are seeking to elevate your relationships and end results will speak volumes.
What we are ultimately trying to achieve for our customers is the capability and knowledge to be able to focus on those businesses that will bring the greatest return in all respects – in essence, develop more business from less customers. Now, this isn’t doing the same old thing that will bring the same old results and I’m sure it would get Mark Twain’s thumbs up – I hope it gets yours too! but then again you could use fairy dust..
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