You might have noticed that we recently hosted a marketing seminar called SL/CED.
Our SL/CED events are a series of seminars designed to give marketing advice in small, easy to digest chunks. We’ve previously ran events on social media and video marketing but this quarter, we focused on how to create marketing messages which generate leads.
During the seminar we had presentations from our marketing experts – MD, Javan Bramhall and Creative Director, Ben King. We also teamed up with brand strategy expert and founder of Go Bookey, Richard Bookey, who has fourteen years’ experience building famous brands, and has worked with clients such as Unilever, Diageo and Samsung. Along with a plethora of tips from our marketing gurus we treated our guests to a free breakfast!
If you couldn’t make it to our event, don’t worry – we’ve rounded up some key takeaways to help you start tailoring your marketing messages to your ideal customers, and win more business.
1. Understand your objectives for your marketing campaigns
Do you know what the definition of a successful marketing campaign is? It’s simple, if you have achieved the objectives you set out for the campaign, then your campaign has been a success.
The best marketing campaigns are always focussed, specific and segmented. Sounds straightforward, but the reality is that so many businesses try to target everyone, using the exact same messaging. However, people don’t have the same needs, challenges or interests, so why should the marketing messages be the same?
Here’s something really important to remember:
“By communicating with everyone, you end up not communicating with anyone”
2. Identify your Ideal Customer
“An Ideal Customer is someone who finds the perfect solution to their problems or needs in the services or products that your company provides.”
That statement is a great definition of who an ideal client is, but we can dig deeper.
An Ideal Customer is:
- Someone you can help with your product or service
- Someone with the right fit – your brand/product/service must be aligned with the customer, or it won’t resonate with them
- Someone in the right location – if you only want to sell to people in the UK, make sure your marketing is targeted to that area
- Someone who has the budget – if you can’t provide a product or service at a price that suits a customer, you will end up delivering a sub-standard product
- The right buying process – is it long term or short term cycles?
If you want more detail on how you define your Ideal Customer, we’ve written more about it in our previous blog.
Why should I care about my Ideal Customer?
In order to create messaging which encourages someone to take an action, you need to understand the people you’re communicating with and what motivates them. The better understanding we have, the better our ability to communicate with them in a way that means they will take action.
Once we understand what challenges our ideal customer has, and what issues we can resolve for them, we can define what our product offers, and this becomes our value proposition.
3. Define your brand and brand purpose
A brand is shorthand for your company’s reputation. It is a way for people to identify with your organisation. When done right, brands can help forge stronger emotional relationships with your customers that lead to repeat purchases. There are many reasons to build a brand but ultimately, it makes your business money.
When you think of a successful brand, one of the biggest that comes to mind is Coca-Cola, and what’s really interesting is that a survey showed that 66% of Coca-Cola’s market capitalisation is accounted for by the brand, not the products itself.
The power of brand purpose
“People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it” Simon Sinek – The Golden Circle
A brand purpose is a way of telling your customers what tension you can resolve in their working or personal life. It’s the reason you do what you do, and why you do it. Having a clearly defined brand purpose is what will connect you to the people most important to you – your Ideal Customers.
4. Bring everything together to successfully execute your brand
Now that you’ve defined your Ideal Customer and you’ve discovered your brand purpose, next up is brand execution – this is how you will communicate with your Ideal Customer.
Always make sure you are consistent in your brand and marketing messages, especially when communicating a brand purpose, if your messaging isn’t consistent, it could undermine the initiative and impact future leads and sales in a negative way.
Remember that messaging is more than words and copy, it’s the imagery, design and style of your marketing material, so make sure these support your key marketing messages.
5. Use marketing messages that create action
Now you have a brand which resonates with your customers, you can start crafting messages which cause people to take action and turn them into leads. Here are a few of our top tips for messages that create action:
- Think emotion as well as logic – problems and challenges are logical, but can also be emotional. For example, an opticians for children will want to promote that eye health is important, but also the emotional factor is that the child wants to fit in, and not feel different just because they wear glasses.
- Define the enemy or the fear – what is the challenge and what are you doing to resolve this challenge?
- Be clear on what action you want them to take – what are you asking people to do as a result of that communication?
- Think ‘Afters’ – define the problem and address it head on, and define your solution to that problem
So, it’s simple really. Define your target audience, and brand purpose and include both in your marketing messages. Once you do this, you’ll get more leads for your business, more sales opportunities, greater brand awareness, larger profit margins and attract talent for your business.
