Create a Competitive Edge: Marketing Your Way to Success
To win you need an edge—a distinct advantage over your competition that pushes you into the lead and keeps you ahead of your opponent. Being passive or playing it safe will not accomplish this, only stepping out of your comfort zone and embracing the risk of proactive marketing will. If there is any area of entrepreneurship that I can categorically claim as providing “that edge” it is proactive marketing. I have personally experienced how powerful a committed marketing strategy can be in building a successful business. There is no question that my company’s success and market domination was the result of our marketing. We knew that our edge was marketing and therefore committed to out market the competition.
How do you give your business an edge, that hidden advantage that keeps it ahead of the competition, produces consistent revenues, and promotes growth? Here are my three foundational pillars that will give you the marketing edge for entrepreneurial success:
- Marketing must be a long-term commitment.
- Failure doesn’t mean defeat.
- Marketing’s purpose is to create opportunities to sell.
Marketing must be a long-term commitment
Marketing success begins with understanding a foundational fact: People buy when they are ready to buy, not necessarily when you are ready to sell. Write this down and make sure everyone in the company, especially the accountants and the marketing staff, memorized it. To secure the edge your marketing must be a long-term commitment. Marketing starts the day you begin operations and continues, uninterrupted, until your business ceases to exist. Make no mistake about the nature of consumer buying habits: the prospect is in control and no matter how good your sales skills are, if the customer isn’t ready to purchase, you just cannot make them buy. For this very reason all marketing strategies must have a view for the long term so that when the customer is ready, your company is the one with the right message in front of the right customer at the right time.
Having a long-term view of marketing strategy means first understanding that there is no magic pill which will transform a business overnight into a success; that following a simple plan, dedicating the necessary resources, and making a commitment to ongoing execution, no matter if parts of the plan fail to deliver on your expectations, is the key to marketing success. A successful marketing strategy must also be diverse in the ways you reach prospective customers and not limited by unfounded presumptions that the latest technology provides the best marketing opportunities. The business world is filled with failures that chased the latest marketing fads and foolishly forgot the fundamentals of good marketing.
Failure doesn’t mean defeat
If an accountant looked at the superficial results of any marketing campaign, they might be inclined to deem most as unmitigated failures. For example, a typical direct-mail campaign will produce a failure rate between 98 to 99 percent. In any other business function, such as manufacturing, these types of failure rates would be unacceptable. They would certainly doom a company. Yet, for overall performance a 2 percent success rate for a direct-mail campaign can be considered a triumph. The benefits of marketing are so strong that a 99 percent failure rate can power a business to the top of their respective market.
Here is where the real power of marketing comes from, of the 99 percent who did not respond; by re-running the same campaign to the same group you will produce a similar response. Meaning you will get responses from another 1 to 2 percent of that target group. Why did these respondents fail to respond to the first campaign, because they were not ready to buy? Continuing to re-run this successful campaign to this target market you will yield nearly identical success rates until you reach a point of diminishing returns.
But that does not stop the marketing effort to that group. Because not every member of the group was ready to purchase and a committed marketer will test other campaigns with different messages and offers until they are able to either beat or match the success of the previous campaign. This is an example of marketing on a continuum and proof of its value is seen all around. Consumer product companies are the prime example. Watch any television program and you will see multiple advertisements throughout for the same specific products. During the Super Bowl, Budweiser, Doritos, and Pepsi all ran multiple commercials during the entire broadcast. They also ran commercials on the pre-game show, the post-game show, and on any other program that had similar viewer demographic profiles. But they were not alone, as their direct competitors were running advertisements as well. Marketing is not a singular event and the most successful businesses are those that embrace the risk of marketing and accept the long-term view.
Marketing’s purpose is to create opportunities to sell
No matter what your business does, revenue and profit are what sustains it. Revenue comes from sales and to sell you need qualified and interested prospects that are transformed into customers. Therefore marketing’s sole responsibility is to create opportunities to sell. Enhancing the brand image, ambiguous marketing messages, and advertising campaigns that do not specifically drive customers to take action will only waste your most precious resource—money. So the first question you must ask yourself when planning a marketing campaign is, “Will this message motivate my target to take action, to respond?” If your message does not have a call to action, then you are wasting money.
There are two very important ingredients in your message that creates opportunities to sell. First, answer the question in your prospect’s mind: “What’s in it for me?” Why should I disrupt my day, routine, or get my butt off this couch to respond to your message? What’s in it for me? You must simply communicate to your prospect an offer that gives a specific benefit and has an incentive for them to respond.
The second ingredient is Now! The offer is not for later, not next week, not when you get around to it, but NOW! When giving someone an option to respond at a later time, they will further differ their buying decision and you risk losing all together. Therefore, we limit the timeframe in which the offer can be taken advantage of and the best time to buy is now!
The right message delivered to the right target at the right time
The formula for a successful marketing campaign is deliver the right message to the right target at the right time. Simple in theory yet complicated in execution. But if you follow my three foundational pillars and commit to a proactive marketing strategy, you will achieve a competitive edge for your business.
