I was chatting with my friend, Angela. She runs a marketing firm for live entertainment in Sydney and we were discussing ideas around branding, market segmentation, and sales.
That got me to thinking about the workshop I led on marketing and sales for sports teams with a league in Australia and New Zealand a few weeks back about growing ticket sales now.
Which led me to today’s idea list of 10 ideas for people thinking about turning around their marketing and sales right now because of COVID, recessions, climate change, or whatever other disaster has been left with us today.
- Invest in your brand: Every digital firm will tell you that you can get by just doing social advertising and direct sales that you drive using PPC. But the data on this is pretty clear, that might work in the first go round, but over time your ability to achieve results from this behavior goes down. Don’t believe me, check out the research from Les Binet and Peter Field in The Long and Short of It.
- Think of the 3 levels of product: The core value. The actual product. The augmented product. The core value is just that what is the big outcome. The actual product is how it is delivered. The augmented product is everything that surrounds the product like customer service, the experience, a website, and so it goes.
- Do some research: Not doing research is like flying blind. You can start with secondary data like the stuff you can get by querying Google.
- Revisit your segmentation: I’ve seen businesses I’ve worked with that haven’t done a proper segmentation of their market in a decade or longer. And, they are still using the old segmentation talking about how great it was for them the last time they did it.
- Make sure you are positioned correctly: What do you want to be in the market? Are you positioned against something? Is it all about you? Or, is there a little bit of both? Maybe, you don’t even know.
- Redefine success: Make sure you have the right measure of success. A lot of times folks don’t have any goals, vision, or objectives. Or, in some cases they are pulled out of thin air and rolled over from year to year.
- Look at the power dynamics in your market: You want your strategy to create power for you against your competition, your customers, and your suppliers. Can your strategy pass that test now?
- Can you state your value proposition?: Why you and not someone else? Similar to your position in the market, but you need to have this down pat from both angles.
- Are you trying to do too much?: Maybe you have too many offers going on in the market. Maybe you are trying to be everything to everyone? Maybe you need to cut back a little bit and have less on offer.
- Don’t fall into the discount trap: Remember, discounts are for dummies. And, if you start doing price based promotions, you’ll lose brand equity rapidly. If you have to fiddle with the price, change the price without making it a “discount”. It is just a “new low price.” It might end up being the same price, but the perception is different and that matters a lot.