Persistence Pays Off in Marketing Strategies

JOHN BARTON

Vice President, Creative Services

Sight Marketing

johnb@sightmarketing.com

sightmarketing.com

Topic: Marketing/ Communications

Telling your story in meaningful and measurable ways should be the goal of any marketing strategy. But it’s not easy, and you may have to tell your story several times – in different ways – to grow your business.

In our first two Experts’ Forum installments we’ve described five of our 10 strategic measured marketing tips: 1) Use a microsite to focus your marketing.

2) Build an intelligent profile.

3) Adapt your marketing to fit your lifestyles.

4) Nurture the “no” and “not now” contacts, and

5) Rely on third-party thought leadership.

Our next three tips focus on maintaining persistence in marketing efforts, building lasting relationships, and closing the gap between the marketing and sales functions.

Give it a beat

Person to person, it often takes several interactions before someone understands what another person is trying to communicate. It takes an average of nine calls to make a sale. Marketing takes time and repetition.

There’s so much competition for people’s attention and as humans, we forget things. Fortunately, people are very good at recognizing patterns. If marketing messages employ consistent branding and positioning and are done at regular intervals, people will eventually recognize a brand. If an offer is strong, the recognition can turn to interest. With a good product or service and a positive brand image in the marketplace, it can turn into a preference to buy.

Build relationships

Marketing feeds into sales and good salespeople build a relationship with their clients. One of the keys to selling is asking questions, listening to the client’s responses, and adapting the message to fit. If this is the pattern good salesmanship employs, shouldn’t marketing do the same thing?

Measured marketing shouldn’t be passive. As long as marketing efforts are being measured, there’s an opportunity to use the feedback to adapt the next message. If your measured marketing records what people are looking at you should be able to use that information to create a “story” or context for your salesperson’s eventual conversation. Ideally, the marketing itself can adapt based on people’s interest.

Play nice with sales

It’s a very poorly kept secret that in many organizations sales and marketing don’t always get along. Marketing departments need to work closely with their internal sales teams, because even the best leads aren’t any good if they are presented to the sales group without context.

A good measured marketing campaign generates reports or dossiers on every qualified contact generated. It’s crucially important to educate sales about the value of the reports and how to read them, and that’s a strong foundation for sales success.

2010-04-01 10:47:33 -0500