Early stage companies often make the same mistakes in promoting their product/service. They spend too much marketing money on all the wrong things. Those wrong things depend on the challenges they face but can include items such as expensive, interactive web sites, lavish trade shows, the wrong brochures, and often the biggest waste of marketing dollars, Advertising. As a general rule we in Canada do not spend enough on marketing and I suspect this may be partly due to our trepidation about spending what we do have ineffectively.
You may find there is no faster way to blow money than on ineffective marketing. Give me a million dollars and it will be gone by sunset. There are lots of people out there who will help me spend great gobs of money on things we ‘feel’ will help. When you hear statements like “We’ve got to get our name out there,” be wary. Marketing dollars are easy to spend but tougher to plan and spend effectively.
But all of these tools can be incredibly effective, especially advertising if used properly and at the right time if you know some basics about how they fit into a professional plan.
Firstly you have to understand very clearly the sales cycle of your particular product or service set. This is one of those never ending challenges. Somewhere a team at Pepsi is still studying their sales cycle. The sales cycle for selling a soft drink to the masses is very different from selling financial planning to people who have international holdings or an enterprise data protection system where the implementation is much more costly that the product.
So:
How do you target your buyers?
Are they easy to find and differentiate? How do you generate leads?
Are you selling to them directly or through some channel?
Are you responding to Requests for Proposals (RFP or RFI)?
How do you qualify a buyer?
What criteria demonstrates that this customer is likely to buy?
How do you convince this buyer
Do you have to demonstrate the product/service, use references, give him/her a loaner product
There are many views of a sales cycle but the key is that the role of Marketing is to accelerate the sales cycle – more sales per unit effort. If marketing cannot do this then don’t do marketing, hire more sales people. So it follows that your marketing must be lined up against your sales cycle to optimize its effectiveness.
Trade shows are a great example. They can be an expensive waste of time. You’ve heard the justification before “All of our competitors will be there and our customers expect us to be there”. Let’s start with the primary reason to go to most trade shows is NOT to impress existing customers (I said most. There are occasions when you are a large established entity where you use trade shows to retain and educate existing customers). If you have a complex product/service that must be demonstrated or presented then trade shows are ideal for generating leads ONLY if you approach it as part of an entire program of ensuring the right people will be there and they have a compelling reason to visit your booth. Focused direct mail campaigns are very helpful in this area. Speaking engagements at the show also draw people to your booth. Trade shows only work if they are taken very seriously and planned very carefully AND map the sales cycle.
Brochures are critical in many businesses but should your brochure be a one page glossy, feel good piece about your company or a 30 page stapled white-paper on your technology, or something in between. The answer again is, what part of the sales cycle are you supporting and making more effective and what is the best way to do that. Will your brochure achieve the goal of getting the customer to call for more information or convince the customer that your product or service is better than the competition, or your company has more experience, or … You need to define where this supports the sales cycle and focus on the right approach. Brochures that try to do everything fail consistently. Brochures that are too general are a waste of paper.
Web sites rate close to a zero in terms of effectiveness by themselves. They are the most passive piece of promotion you have but they cannot be beat for information delivery when some other mechanism gets the customer to the web site. And even then, proportionality is key. Scale your web involvement to fit the problem you are trying to solve. Web sites are used for more than marketing but marketing must come first in most cases. Marketing helps sales get customers and without customers …
How many times have you seen people turn first to advertising? Advertising is the LAST thing you do and it can be the most effective but ONLY when all of the other marketing support pieces for the sales cycle are in place. Advertising delivers lots of eyes on your product/service and you had better be ready or it’s a waste of money. Think of it like running a store and going outside with a bull horn to invite people in. All the shelves better be full of properly displayed and priced products, the cashes better be warmed up and be carrying lots of change and the sales people all lined up dressed in their finest or all of those people flooding in to your store will soon leave empty handed and they won’t respond the next time you use the bull horn.
Lastly, get help. Unless you have a proven track record in marketing assume that you will waste most of your spending if you do not get professional help on building and executing a promotional plan. Great messaging, copy, images, positioning, etc. are critical to success and should be left to professionals. Whether you have the resources for an internal marketing guru or use outside help, interview until you find someone who really seems to ‘get it’ Who understands the role of promotion as a marketing function to support the sales cycle and can clearly articulate how that can be achieved.
Don’t be afraid of spending money on marketing, just get good at it.