If I had a £5 note for every company that I’ve heard say ‘We don’t need marketing we’re successful already’ or ‘We don’t need marketing, we’ve got more sales than we know what to do with’ I’d be very rich…. well I’d take a few extra days off!
So often in marketing it’s the companies that aren’t doing so well that we focus our attention on, but it’s also the successful organisations that need marketing to maintain their success and propel them to further rewards.
So why if you are a successful business do you need to think about your marketing? Here are 6 reasons…
1. Be able to analyse your success to prioritise your efforts
Are you concentrating on the right sales and the right customers? Which products are bringing you the most success with the highest margins? How will you target these customers to maintain higher margins over the longer term? Marketing is all about identifying these customers and identifying the right product and proposition for them. Without marketing you simply aren’t being as efficient as you could be. You could be using resources on the wrong type of sales or the wrong customer. You have finite resources and you need to create the best results from them.
2. Retaining and nurturing your best customers
We all know the 80/20 rule – 20% of your customers will bring in 80% of your value. So it’s important to know who these people are, but also hold on to them with regular, relevant and engaging communications. There are so many touch points a customer could have. Don’t forget that your competition will be trying to access these touch points too. They will be trying to acquire your customers. How can you utilise the touch points you have?
“60-80% of customers who describe themselves as satisfied do not go back to do more business with the company that initially satisfied them.”
According to a Bain & Company study, 60-80% of customers who describe themselves as satisfied do not go back to do more business with the company that initially satisfied them. One of the main reasons for this is the level of engagement with the brand. Customers remain at the one off purchase level. To move them to a loyal and engaged customer you need to be undertaking customer relationship management (CRM) ; nurturing customers through the product life cycle and their journey within the business and providing them with informative, engaging content, through the appropriate channels.
3. Having too many sales can lead to a bad customer experience – you need to manage this experience
Yes that’s right. Too many sales can mean slow delivery times, slower installations or even just a simple slower response time on an online chat. A bad customer experience leads to a bad review and with 82% of people saying they read online reviews, that can’t be good for business.
Marketing can manage that customer experience, whether that is adjusting the PPC so less traffic is directed to the website or using social media to give customers a better idea of what to expect.
4. Tell everyone about your success and generate more business
By not marketing yourself when you are most successful you are missing out on more business. Look at big companies when they have successful annual results, they don’t shy away from the publicity. Use this opportunity to talk about your plans, talk about what is good about the company. Share some of the success with customers – offer them rewards and a simple thank you. Utilise on and offline marketing channels to promote this content and messaging.
5. Use this an opportunity to motivate your staff
Staff morale will be high if you are able to share how well you are doing. Providing your sales team with marketing materials such as stats, handouts, snippets from testimonials will give them even more encouragement to go and sell more. They will feel buoyant with the success and supported well by the business.
6. Keep yourself and not your competitors front of mind
Build up your reputation, not your competitors’. If you don’t use marketing to shout about your success, it will be your competition who are number one on the the customer’s list to contact.
Create testimonials showing customer satisfaction, talk about the great service you provide, offer other relevant products and show customers you understand them and have what they need.
Make sure it’s you that your customers remember and for all the right reasons.
So if you are sitting there with more sales than you know what to do with, then take some time to think about how marketing can strengthen your position not just now, but in the longer term, ensuring your success continues into the future.