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| John Ozimek, associate director at Mi liberty |
To many people marketing is a bit of a dirty word. The concept of marketing is something that is hard to pigeonhole or to describe. Usually, the marketing person is the one wearing the funky glasses who enjoys being ‘creative’, the person spending all that budget the sales team worked hard to create.
Yet that is far from the reality. Good marketing has the power to transform businesses and increase revenues; great marketing can literally change lives. I always describe effective marketing as a way of thinking, in the same way that designers and architects see more than
just lines on a page or bricks and mortar; it is about the ability to grasp the big picture.
An effective marketing campaign should always be more than the sum of its parts; it should touch and embrace every aspect of a business, creating a clear, defined and relevant offer that customers can instantly understand and trust. Of course, something so idealistic is always easier said than done. Every day, the average person is exposed to more than three thousand marketing messages. Logos, offers, old products, new products, everything new and improved and available for a once in a lifetime discount.
For businesses to really engage through marketing, they need to be able to cut through
the chaos and talk directly to the people they need to reach
But how much of this to we even retain? Our brains do a tremendous job of filtering 99% of what we see without us even realising it. Marketing and advertising has to be truly exceptional or to resonate absolutely with the target market for it to get past the sentries posted in our subconscious.
Because of this, the way companies use marketing is changing. With ever more ways of talking to customers across TV, print, websites, blogs, mobile phones and social media sites, the focus has shifted towards relevance; crafting messages for very specific customer groups, whether businesses or individuals.
As a proportion of overall marketing spend, more than £3 billion was spent purely on online advertising in the UK last year, from a total of £19.4 billion across all media, according to the World Advertising Research Centre. The reason for this is that in the drive for better ROI, marketeers have seen that the web offers a far more direct way of reaching customers than ever before. This need for effectiveness is changing the nature of marketing, meaning that intelligent marketing is key.
For businesses to really engage through marketing, they need to be able to cut through the chaos and talk directly to the people they need to reach. Effective tactics are never one size fits all. In the mobile industry, the sales and promotional tools provided by operators and handset companies are usually aimed at a very generic audience; the lowest common denominator if you like. So the priority becomes defining what else needs to happen.
In a crowded market, really understanding your customers is the key to making yourself stand out from the competition. Look closely and there is always a reason why a customer makes a particular decision. It could be as simple as the friendliness of the staff, or the breadth of products and services on offer. It could be the convenience of the location, or the ability of the sales team to quickly identify what the customer really wants. All of these are reasons why customers trust you to handle their business, and they are your differentiators.
Think about this: just 14% of people trust the adverts they see. That means that for every customer who walks into a store, or every business who sifts through collateral and brochures, more than two thirds of them will dismiss anything they see as untrustworthy. That’s not a reflection on the business itself; it means that the way companies market themselves just simply is not getting through.
But before anyone rushes back to their desks to slash the advertising budgets, this insight into trust in advertising by global media research firm Neilsen has thrown up a big positive. That is, that 78% of people trust a recommendation made by a friend or business contact. In our efforts to filter out the unwanted messages, we instead hold the opinions of those we trust in higher regard than ever before.
Next issue I’ll be taking a look at a business model that has taken trust and recommendation as a means of selling to an extreme: eBay. Until then, think about what makes your customers trust in you - you may just find something extra in your business that is worth telling your customers about. And that, in essence, is all marketing is.
 | | Website: www.miliberty.com |