September 15, 2020

Driving business growth is an important issue that is top of mind for all business leaders, regardless of the type of business you’re leading.  It’s one of the few goals that both for-profit and nonprofit organizations share. While this issue is top of mind for many due to the shifts that have occurred because of COVID-19, it is an especially pressing issue for the estimated 7.5 million small businesses that are at risk of closing, according to a new survey from Main Street America.  More than 90% of the 5,850 business owners polled have fewer than 20 employees. 

Approximately two-thirds of entrepreneurs said they may have to shut forever if business disruption continues at its current rate for up to five months. Maintaining a balanced status quo for the next twelve months is the real growth goal. The key question is how to drive growth to achieve profitability and overcome the loss of business already experienced. 

Federal programs, such as the CARES Act expands the existing PPP Program and helps many but does not represent a permanent fix. With so many businesses who have already closed temporarily as a result of the coronavirus there is an enormous need for businesses of every type and size to drive new growth. 

Here are three time-tested strategies for producing growth:

1. Comprehensive health checkup of an organization’s strengths and weaknesses.It’s vital to use a systematic process to obtain an objective measurement of the factors that affect an organization’s ability to grow. Understanding what can or should change to improve the ability to perform is not a luxury; it’s a necessity. A health checkup process designed to help executive leaders identify any organizational gaps their organization hasfuels profitable growth that impacts all organizations.
2. Deep insights into how current clients perceive an organization and its value.  The first step to building and maintaining strong organization to client relationships is to identify perception-reality gaps.  The role that high retention rates play in the organization cannot be overestimated because it’s one of the most important metrics used to evaluate organizational health.
3. Strategy roadmap that provides navigation to strong organizational growth.  Knowing the performance level of your organization and how it’s going to improve it is what leaders want to see. It identifies what capabilities an organization has that provides the projections needed to sustain and scale the organization. This knowledge helps avoid the common pitfall of poor prioritization that plagues so many organization that hinder their growth.

These dynamics have been analyzed by us using thousands of data points we have gathered during organizational transformation efforts over the past decade, and we have found these keys can drive any organization’s growth.

March 22, 2016

I was looking for a particular type of ice-coffee maker for several minutes, struggling to find what I knew was out there, each minute growing more aggravating in a particularly annoying kind of way.

This felt like other situations I had experienced far too many times . . .

We all spend an incredible amount of time ‘searching’ which draws to us to a reasonable and logical question to ask: “Are we searching in the wrong way or is the information not being made available to us in the right way?” I’ve concluded it’s not us, it’s them! The ‘them’ of course means the brand owners who are presenting their products and services for consideration.

Their goal is not the same as ours. Theirs is to sell us their stuff. Ours is to find the right stuff we would like based on our needs. Herein lies the disconnection between potential customers and brand owners and explains why the majority of people are frustrated and confused during their web searches.

We spend an inordinate amount of time, and a substantial amount of energy, trying to locate whatever we need for our every day situations. Is this a silly set of issues? Maybe. But what’s not up for question is the amount of time wasted during these searches and it all boils down to how brand owner’s talk to the people they want to attract.

So what can we do to improve our communications? We need to aim for clarity in three areas:

1.) Clear objectives. The first step in any communication is to know what your main point is. This occurs by understanding the nature of your audience. During one of our strategy sessions our creative director said he could get any person in the room to read a 1,500-word, three-column, all text ad. That’s a ridiculous claim since most ads have roughly 35 to 50 words but then he put money on the table and Laura took the bet! He went to the board and wrote these words:

Laura Larson’s Life

Boom! Point made. If a brand talks in the other person’s interests and in their first person they’ll read and read and read. But if the copy position is reversed, which nearly all copy is, the person searching for a specific product they would like ends in frustration because it doesn’t sound or feel like something they’d like to own. Why? Because it’s not about them, it’s about the brand owner’s endless features and benefits. Brand owners need to get below the surface and find out what is meaningful to their customers and present their products from this perspective. So you see, it’s not about the length of the copy that matters so much as the perspective that it takes.

2.) Clear visuals. There is an enormous need to optimize for all devices. Over half of all Internet searches are performed on a smart phone or tablet yet the vast majority of websites are not optimized for mobile devices. Adding to this is 83% of people searching own more than two devices and bookmarking is a common practice. So when someone first searches for something on their desktop computer and then comes back to it on their mobile device, if the website hasn’t been optimized a major disconnect usually occurs and the potential customer clicks off the site.

3.) Clear Invitation. Always ask for permission to do something such as make predictive recommendations. Don’t be a party crasher! That was okay during high school, and maybe college, but it is not appropriate now that you’re a grownup. Trust mapping shows that the majority of people are willing to trust brands over time that have respected their privacy and usage based on what they have opted into. The same holds true in reverse so beware of capturing data on people and over-marketing products they did not ask you to track. Today this is still a regular practice but as privacy issues mount you will see much of this fall by the wayside and be replaced by “Opt-In Safe Website” signs assuring visitors that their search privacy will be protected.

These are some foundational building blocks for a culture of healthy conversations. The key is they need to work together in one cohesive system. If you exclude one, a communications gap will result and call into question your brand’s integrity.

Remember the question we began this discussion with, “Are we searching in the wrong way or is the information not being made available to us in the right way?”

Well here’s an answer. Maybe. Have you been practicing the three areas listed above?

*Names have been changed.

 

 

February 29, 2016

 

Knowing what customers are looking for helps you shape the most effective strategic plan and can make your brand stand out from the rest. Our company has researched more than 500 organizations to gain a deeper understanding of what made them successful and how they fueled their marketing to attract and expand their customer base. There are five basic rules that we have discovered for organizations that use content to drive interest in their products and services from their target markets.

1. Make sure all of your market communications are built for multi-screens. Today, the average consumer uses two different devices and business users up to five different devices. Often, they are using them together to seek and find the information and product they are looking for. With a bounce rate potential within 3 seconds it’s essential that each screen be custom designed and yet the great majority of organizations today do not have this as a standard operating design procedure.
2. Make sure your content is enjoyable to read. Everyone likes a good story so why aren’t more companies using humor? Because it’s more difficult to do than straightforward business copywriting. Well, that might be easier for your organization to produce but you will not experience outstanding results from being the fact giver at the party! Making people laugh and enjoy themselves always makes for a better start of a relationship which, when you boil it all down, is exactly what a business is built on. Relationships. So make yours enjoyable.
3. Make sure you copy is to the point and short, not long. There is a strong resistance to extremely long copy. People are busy and impatient for the information they are searching for and if they do not find it quickly they move onto other sources until they do. A single picture that shows someone what you are saying is often a better way to present the information than a detailed and long description. Also, when someone is searching during an initial investigation they want high-level facts that tell them they have found the right place and information. Once that requirement is met they want more detailed information. Being able to provide the information they need in the dosage they want is key to building stickiness with your customers.
4. Make sure you’re not perceived as a burglar. Now that many organizations have discovered how to track their target prospects they are hanging cookies and other Internet programming onto a person’s identity and “Following Them” around through their daily searches. Ever search for an item and then found it showing up on web pages that have nothing to do with your search? Personally I think this should be against the law. Harrys.com is a great example. Unless you enjoy being stalked I would suggest never searching this company. I’m happy to report that the majority of people end up resenting this technique so I think it’s likely the practice will eventually be dropped due to a universal rejection of it. In the meantime, don’t be that guy!
5. Make sure to build trusting relationships. The harsh reality is our culture is one of suspicion where trust is a highly valued commodity. Earning a customer’s trust is not easy to do but worth every penny once you achieve this vaulted goal. For a prospect to gain interest in your company and content it has to answer the primary questions that long-lasting relationships are built upon: “Who Are You” and “Why Should I trust You?” The most trusted and successful brands in the world answer these questions and are those that can be trusted to do precisely what they promise every single time. And if there is a problem they are the quickest to resolve it without complaint or the blame game.

Due to the ever-increasing rise of security fraud people are emptying their web browser’s cache on a routine basis and not allowing marketers to be invasive. Smart marketers understand this and support this notion with action by not leaving tracking cookies on their prospects’ or customers’ identities. Customers are rewarding them with their trust.

February 26, 2016

 

Simple often trumps complex when it comes to adding new business to your business. Sophisticated levels of achievement scoring or multi-faceted marketing plans can be effective if managed with precision and consistency. However, many organizations are overwhelmed by these techniques so finding simpler ways to build your business is often a better strategy.

Here are a few best practices that our research of leading companies have found to be quite effective:

1. Build Triggers: Once you have mapped out the specific sales steps that the majority of all of your present customers followed on their way to becoming one of your best customers, identify the underlying “Trigger” that pushed them onto the next step in the process. The key to determine this is if they were strong enough on their own to drive action? Was the reward or challenge you offered sufficiently enticing? And did they activate the key corporate reputational aspects you are defined by?

2. Focus On Triggers, Not Features: It is preferable to find triggers that offer value that drive business versus promotions that give away value to gain something. Although this give and take is used extensively it’s a little known fact that the companies that are known for pure value plays are often the leaders in their field without giving anything away for free. If you find that the necessary “Fuel” to motivate a customer to the next step is required, it is preferable that they gain use of your product for a period of time for free allowing them time to experience it before making a buying decision.

3. Test and Retest: Continue testing after a successful product launch to see what triggers are the most and least effective which will allow you to determine where to put your marketing budget and which ones to stop using.

By applying these three Customer Triggers you can find your marketing becoming more effective and your sales improving. By continuing to measure you will also discover if you need new or different triggers to keep the growth curve moving in the right direction!

April 30, 2015

 

One of the best ways to evaluate your sales and marketing is to consider how well they’re integrated and how well they work in concert with one another. Is marketing passing the right type of information sales needs to garner interest among interested prospects? Are sales providing continuous market feedback to marketing to help them make better-informed judgments about positioning statements? Or do you have two groups that seldom mix?

The increase of competition in markets, niches, and niches of niches is becoming increasingly more difficult to navigate each day. There are several things occurring in the market that were not as severe in previous years.

• Extended Buying Cycles require marketing and sales to engage prospects for a much longer time.
• Reduced Resources with constant revenue demands strain sales and marketing efficiency.
• Lack of Direction leads to missed opportunities.

Companies who continue to rely upon the sales and marketing principles that made them successful in years past often find themselves with lackluster results because the underlying foundation no longer applies to many segments of their business. For instance, cold calling without a diagnosed market concentration will usually produce limited results. Industry sales and marketing surveys of entrepreneurial companies often cite the ineffectiveness of these types of processes for producing new business sales development.

If you think about how your sales and marketing team was put together, you might find that it was accomplished using piece-meal steps. No other aspect of a business is typically developed in this way. Perhaps this is why sales marketing programs are failing, including yours?

This simple 6-step approach might bring you better results:

1. Market Research

– Identify top market targets

– Create a value proposition that is more compelling than your competition

2. Sales & Marketing Strategy

– Align with target market’s buying cycle and company’s key
objectives

– Identify key drivers inside and
outside of your company to leverage resources

3. Marketing Execution

– Create new tactics and tools to achieve your client’s goals

– Create messaging that actually says something new and different

4. Lead Generation

– Inbound and outbound – understand how to grow opportunities

– Create a seamless conversation between your marketing and sales system

5. Sales Management  

– Develop a sales process that works with marketing, not against it

– Maximize your top sales channels and fuel your dollars into these efforts

6. Results Analysis

– Close the loop – service your clients heavily to keep them coming back

Regardless of the type of business you run, your company’s ability to create new customer relationships is the lifeblood that will keep your company growing – not to mention profitable. A tightly designed integration of sales and marketing operations can bring you a competitive advantage in your key market niches and allow you to continue to grow your customer base for years to come.

March 31, 2015

 

Increased competition can be astounding and become increasingly more difficult each day. Do these sound familiar?

> Extended Buying Cycles require marketing and sales to engage prospects for a much
longer time.

> Reduced Resources with constant revenue demands strain sales and marketing
efficiency.

> Lack of Direction leads to missed opportunities.

Business sales and marketing communications are constantly evolving as companies seek better ways to develop new clients and reach new markets faster. For many entrepreneurial companies, the next stage in the development process is Sales Marketing Integration (SMI). SMI engages organizations to communicate better, collaborate more effectively and run more efficiently within a relatively short period of time, regardless the market niche.

SMI drives sales, marketing, and customer service toward a unified platform and gives the full team the tools they need to achieve their organization’s goals more quickly. By combining lead generation, media communications, sales strategy, social marketing and related web marketing into one cohesive group strategy and activity, crisscrossing of messages and resources are eliminated that so often accompanies a growing organization with several departments.

Here’s what you need to use an SMI approach:

• A way to integrate all sales, marketing and customer service into one cohesive platform.
• New sales and marketing strategies and tactics.
• Significant overall customer development
and revenue builds.
• Major improvements in marketing campaign
efficiency through a strategic approach that monitors both the marketing spend and ROI
factoring.
• Complete and professional integration of both sales and marketing operations.

Regardless of the type of business you run, your company’s ability to create new customer relationships is the lifeblood that keeps your company growing – not to mention profitable. A tightly designed integration of sales and marketing operations can bring you a competitive edge in your key markets.

November 25, 2014

 

Many companies in today’s marketplace are encountering tremendous difficulty staying current with all of the changes taking place. I know many people who are currently being forced to rethink everything they have always done and been successful doing due to the competitive pressures in the market. During this time, it is only natural and wise to take account of what you are doing and planning on doing in the future.

For example, consider an attorney who has held her own professional practice for 20 years who finds herself without the ongoing amount of referrals and engagements she is used to enjoying. At first it feels like a typical short-term problem but then, after several months of this situation dragging on, it begins to feel more serious.

The natural question to ask is, “Am I doing anything differently than I have always done?” And almost in all cases the answer is a resounding no. So what has caused the shift is the next logical question. In many cases it’s because this person has not changed or shifted strategies so they find themselves in a very negative position.

In Chicago where I grew up I witnessed first hand the total destruction of the Typographer’s Union as they picketed the Chicago Tribune who began installing computerized typesetting. The Tribune offered the union members the opportunity to learn computer programming and transition to new positions. Some took them up on their offer, but most did not preferring to picket in front of the Tribune’s building for several years until their money ran out and their union closed.

Product marketing companies and professional services firms are not used to making these types of transitions. Usually, they are in front of the market leading the charge and earning the rewards.

Today is different because everything and everyone is being examined regardless of their station or speciality. As you think through your options and perspectives, you will want to take a look at your company’s skillsets. Are they current or have they collected a bit too much sameness and dust over the years? First you will want to make sure you are being objective and then decide if it’s time for a new product or service or a new outright strategic approach.

This can be disquieting to even the most skilled professionals because they lack experience with failing. But remember, nothing succeeds like a failed strategy. What I mean by this is, it’s equally important to understand what is not working as it is to understand what will work. Usually, determining the cause of the failure will lead you to what will be a success

October 28, 2014

 

Winning over new customers today does not happen by simply listening to what your competitors are saying but it also entails developing a smart strategic plan based upon real-time information of what your customers will act on. Gaining and analyzing competitive intelligence has always been a large part of strategic planning in corporate America. Restaurants, for instance, are extremely competitive within tight market niches filled with skilled strategists that are astute at matching customer’s needs to specific dining preferences.

While these types of companies recognize the endless benefits of mining their competitive data, they have also learned that it is equally important – and in some cases more important – to match this data against their high frequency customers’ needs to ensure their strategies synchronize with their deepest needs.

It is important today to review the strategies of your firm against both your customers’ and competitors’ offerings to ensure your strengths are truly more attractive to your customers. This focus on value – rather than specific features – is a big part of positioning a brand more favorably against its competition. Winning the positioning battle is the primary goal of any strategist because it leads to the springboard to growth that can provide instant results when carried out correctly.

Here are a few suggestions for building a competitive advantage using a centralized and timely business model:

• Know why customers come and go. Understanding how many have come in three month intervals and why long-standing customers have stayed is vital to building a better value strategy. This is especially important in today’s environment where clients are pushing back on rate increases and turning to outsourced solutions on an increasing basis.
• Generate continuous news. There are many types of news items that are extremely attractive to news outlets such as opening a new office, hiring a new employee, changing a practice area to include a new service, are just a sampling of what is news worthy.
• Market new events and webinars. Companies often are engaged in external events that they do not publish in any form other than to signup customers to attend. This is a lost opportunity for positioning of your company given how easy it is to promote these types of events at very little expense, if any.
• Know how your firm is trending. It is vital to understand your own firm’s trend lines to better inform your strategic decisions in the near and long term. For example, if you your firm has been in business for a long time and you have not conducted customer affinity research for an equally long time you might find you are totally out of step with your market. This can be a very rude awakening and one that should be prevented at all costs.

Maximizing your organization’s value often is accomplished by turning what is considered every day events and information into actionable competitive intelligence and initiatives that will help you achieve your growth goals. And that’s something always worth the value to achieve.

September 23, 2014

It’s a tough question to answer, I know, but it’s one that needs to be answered more and more regardless of the type of business you’re running. Once reserved for the Coke’s, McDonald’s or Apple’s of the world, today any organization of any size needs to have an extremely well developed Corporate Strategy if it hopes to stay in business during today’s incredibly multi-sliced marketplace.

In order to build a foundation for your organization and its brand there are four knowledge areas you should consider focusing on.

Know what you are really selling. One of the toughest things senior leaders often have to face is their product no longer cuts through in the market. Pointing to past years’ successes are great for benchmarking, but not enough to produce valid projections for the future. It’s just difficult to say goodbye to products! But in a very real sense, selling involves knowing what market you are in and deciding what products are going to keep you growing in it. Are you in the business of always coming up with new products or the replacement business that provides an adequate solution to those who are looking for alternatives to the leading brand? Knowing this can easily spell the difference between success or failure.

Know your target market. The more specific you can be about the market you serve, and those you don’t serve, the better. This allows you to focus your brand messaging based on micro messaging and eliminate as many unqualified prospects as possible. As one CEO client of ours recently shared with me, if I  have to first educate a potential customer and then sell him on our services that’s one too many sales we’re making. Instead, target prospects that are already educated in what you have to sell and go after them with a clear and compelling strategy.

Know the true benefits to your customers. This seems obvious and yet how many sales pitches have you sat through that had nothing to do with what you were truly interested in? It’s really quite frustrating when I find someone trying to sell me something that I myself already offer! How could this happen? Simple. They didn’t bother researching what we provided before they made their pitch. Know the benefits you can offer your customer that they will truly appreciate.

Know your target customers. The best way to find out about your target customers is to spend time with them. We used to call this field research. People don’t like to do this anymore because it’s too time intensive, etc. But the fact is the more you know about them and the more they know about you the more likely they are to buy from you. So spend the time to get to know them. In the long run, this strategy will pay enormous dividends that an “In and Out Strategy” never will.

These four foundations to your business work best if you can apply them in a concerted market or discipline. Trying to be all things to all markets is very difficult, even for very large companies. Today, specialization trumps diversification nearly every time and that creates a strategy that will produce solid results for years to come.

September 16, 2014

 

As more companies work to make their Corporate Strategy practices impactful and visible, senior leaders and their staffs are becoming increasingly more aware of the causal-effect relationships that exist based on their understanding of their target market segments. The line between an organization’s sales and marketing and its dedication to build high performance is becoming more difficult to separate. So much so, we now recommend the Performance Program of any organization should be thought of as one strategy for ALL departments.

During the past several years MarketCues has employed its SmartPlan360˚ Program that performs organizational and strategic assessments. The primary focus of these engagements is to identify the “Gap” or delta between an organization’s perceptions versus the realities of what their target market thinks. The results inspire nonprofits, educational institutions and businesses alike to strengthen their strategic positioning in order to begin driving their business growth.

Gone are the days where marketing is done by one group, sales is done by another, and customer service is provided by a third. For that reason, MarketCues has dedicated itself to explore innovative ways to quickly bring fresh new insights to an organization that adds immediate value. Understanding the “Gap” between what is and is not understood by the organization as a whole is often the key that unlocks explosive growth.

Strategic marketing or strategic planning may go by many names, but one thing is for sure, an organization’s future prospects and ultimate success is driven by possessing a truly reliable view of what it can consistently deliver to its key customers while offering a compelling strategic advantage. This builds both sustainability and drives growth.

Understanding this key is equally important for an organization just starting up or one that has been in business for 100 years or more. This type of strategic planning looks at both where the organization is today and where it wants to go tomorrow, and then builds a long-term strategy based upon its true competitive market strengths.