Sales and Marketing nuggets for May 2020

Agile marketing teams are better prepared to respond to market dynamics Ensure that your marketing team understand agile principles and follows them well. Only agile marketing teams would be successful in a constantly changing world

Learning something about your customers or market that was different than you expected opens a new set of opportunities for you Keep constantly looking for new signals and insights about the customers you deal with or market you play in

The brand will become strong when marketing campaigns are driven by an overarching vision, mission and strategy If your vision and mission are known to clearly to every member of the marketing team then they will naturally think of them while working on any marketing campaign

For effective communication, assume that you are talking to your audience in their second language For effective communication, assume that you are talking to your audience in their second language

It is a lot easier to fool your audience into visiting your website once. How are you making them come back again and again? You can boost your FB post or do a paid campaign to make users visit your site once. It needs meticulous planning and thorough execution to make them love your site.

During Pandemic, pause and reconsider your social media plans Your audience expects you to be sensitive about their situation. Don't bombard them with your sales pitches. Take a break and relook. Are those pieces of content helping your audience?

Don't shoehorn your brand into a conversation in which it doesn't belong There are things that you know well, and there are things that you don't. Don't involve your brand in the discussions where you know little. The only way to achieve leadership position is by talking about things that you know well

If you are analyzing the success of your campaign against the old metrics, then please think again. This is a different time. All your previous marketing campaigns had mostly controllable factors with set expectations. However, COVID-19 has changed it fundamentally. Change your success metrics accordingly.

Nobody expected that you would have to use the crisis communication plan. However, did you have it in the first place? It is ok if we didn't have a crisis communication plan. Nobody expected a COVID-19 pandemic at this time. Now that we are in this phase, have we started building one?

What separates high performing marketing team from a mediocre one? When both high performing and mediocre, more or less, have the same resources and do the same things, they are separated by the ‘executive buy-in'

Are people beyond your organization helping you market your product and services? When you have people outside your organization to represent and promote your brand, your force is multiplied manifold. Think of how you can involve influencers to talk about you.

Are you waiting for the product to be built before you start marketing it? Well, you can try to market it well in advance. Law doesn't hold you back from doing it.

Are your buyers involving themselves in your higher purpose? No? Have you told them yours? If your buyers are known about your higher purpose of existence then they will want to be part of it. They will engage with you beyond your offering.

We live in an unlimited media age. Think of how we can utilize it to our benefit Everybody is a potential marketer. Is everybody marketing? Think about how can you make everybody promoting your brand.

The right message to the right person at the right time will skyrocket your sales. Have you got your message, persona, and buyer journey defined? How will you come up with so many ‘right' things all at once without it?

Are you looking at organizational growth as a whole? Do you think that organizational growth is the sole responsibility of your sales and marketing teams? We live in a different world where everybody is helping you drive your mission.

Do you know what caused you the last five sales exactly? Know your buyers' triggers and work towards enhancing them to impact your revenue positively.

The real value of the internet is not the publication but the ability to interact individually at scale. Utilize the internet and modern technologies to hyper personalize your messages. You can develop conversations with individuals respecting their individuality.

If you want your message to break through the noise, then personalize it I am not interested in what you have to say. I am interested in what I want to listen to. Can you talk to me about what I want?

Are you suffering from ‘digital sameness'? Think of ways to personalize your communication Everybody wears the same uniform to the school yet everybody is different. Don't talk to the uniforms. Instead, talk to the students wearing that uniform.

The more people you have marketing your offerings, the better they are going to sell Evangelism marketing is about making your customers so loyal to your brand that they are actively sharing good words about it.

Your customers are buying from you to achieve something. Your products and services are mere means for them to achieve their goals. Knowing your customers' goals will enable you to create a better value for them. You can up-sell, cross-sell, forge complimenting partnerships, position your product differently with relative ease.

Does your immediate competitor have any best practice which is transferable? Acquire it. There's no shame in learning from your competition if that is going to help you grow your business.

How are you going to change the behavior of your customers? If you could drive a positive behavioral change in your customers then they will connect with you forever. A business thrives on such connections.

Do your customers have a natural alternative? If your customers can switch to different products or services, you should build a USP that will make them stick to your business. It's easier to build loyalty with a high-quality offering than in the absence of one.

There are so many different ways to ruin the relationship. And, as a business, it's not easy to win it back once you lose it Don't be penny wise and pound foolish. Respect the implicit pact of any relationship. The customers don't like to be tricked. They will eventually know it.

What's your business culture - Revenue-centric, product-centric, or customer-centric? There's no good or bad culture. Just that it should be pervasive, businesses can't afford to have a fragmented culture. Such businesses would be seen as unreliable and, at times, opportunistic.

Until customers have choices, businesses would need to convince them that their needs are recognized Only this way, businesses would succeed. Who would want to transact with the business that doesn't know what a buyer wants?

What is your customer acquisition cost versus customer lifetime value? Unless your customer lifetime value is high, you can't spend too much on acquiring that customer.

What is your customer churn rate? Your churn rate should be higher than the acquisition rate. Common sense, right? Surprisingly, not many businesses keep track of either of these metrics.

Do you know which type of your customers are leaving early and why? It's rare to have only one segment of customers for businesses. Different segments of customers behave differently. Some of them leave you early for specific reasons. Address those reasons, and you can retain them

Do you know what is the 'expected customer churn rate'? If you are into the healthcare business, you will want your customers i.e., patients, to go home once they are healthy. Your customers will churn naturally, and that's expected

Don't confuse between the inertia with the loyalty Sometimes you might assume that people and customers are not leaving you because they are loyal. Think thoroughly about the reason for their stickiness. The future of your business depends on that

Are you optimizing your business for the new category of customers? There could be high paying new customer categories evolving out in the market. What are you doing to capture that new segment?

Don't undermine disruptors within your industry just because their size is small. All existing big corporations are the small-size disruptors of the past. Keep leading your industry - innovate faster than disruptors, acquire disruptors or partner with disruptors

Have you sent the customer feedback form but never spoke with your customers? Sometimes, doing things for the sake of doing is more dangerous than not doing it at all. Your customers want to be looked after and not just heard.

Split the demand generation campaigns into three parts - pre-execution, execution, and followup Many businesses miss out on including the 'followup' part in their campaigns. It is equally, or slightly more, necessary for bringing in more leads

Marketing tools and technologies have evolved a lot in the last ten years. Has your execution evolved proportionately? Is your marketing team utilizing all the new-age tools and technologies to attract and convert customers?