Why You Don’t Need More Marketing
4 easy things that will help you achieve your business goals
Yep, you read that right, when you’re trying to move the needle for your business, more marketing isn’t necessarily the answer. The businesses that get real results from their marketing aren’t necessarily the ones doing or spending the most — they’re the ones making smarter decisions about where to focus their time, attention and budget. Here’s four simple things you can do to make your marketing more effective before you update your socials, revamp your website or spend another dollar.
- Start with the business goal, not the marketing activity
Great marketing starts with a clear business goal. Do you want to grow your customer base? Attract higher value customers? Drive more repeat business? Enter a new market? Start with what you want to achieve, rather than jumping straight to the activity you’re going to do. Before you spend any money, ask yourself, “What’s this supposed to achieve?”
How to do it:
- Choose one clear business priority that you can measure.
- Work backwards to identify what needs to happen to achieve it.
- Make every marketing activity justify its place by linking it to that goal.
- Play favourites and get to know your customers
If you don’t know who you’re targeting, it’s impossible to create effective marketing (although it’s very easy to waste a lot of money!). Take a look at your current customers and figure out who you’d clone if you could. Ask yourself what makes a great customer for your business. Factor in more than what they spend, think about profitability, loyalty, frequency of purchase, ease of doing business and what you achieve together. Once you can identify your ideal customer, get to know them better. Ask, what prompts them to purchase? What are their business priorities and pain points? Where and how did they find you? Why have they chosen you over the competition?
How to do it:
- Identify your most valuable customers — not just your biggest spenders.
- Talk to five or 10 of them about why they chose you and what they value.
- Look for common needs, motivations and problems you can build your marketing around.
- Get clear about why someone should choose you
Identify the genuine difference between your business and the alternatives. “Great service”, “quality products” and “locally owned” are all great things, but they’re not much of a differentiator when everyone says them. Customers care less about what you’re selling and more about how it’s going to help them. Think about your customers’ needs, problems or goals — and how you make their life better.
How to do it:
- Unpack what you do and keep asking: “So what does that mean for the customer?”
- Consider what customers would do if they didn’t choose you.
- Turn your genuine point of difference into a simple, customer-focused message.
- Measure outcomes, and learn what works
Take that objective you started with and decide what success would look like. Likes, impressions and clicks can be useful indicators, but they aren’t the same as leads, sales, repeat customers or revenue. Measuring what matters helps you understand what’s working, what isn’t and where to put your effort next. Free isn’t necessarily valuable and expensive isn’t always effective. Instead look at the things that produce the results that move the needle for your business.
How to do it:
- Choose two or three measures that directly relate to your business goal.
- Review what you’re doing or what you’ve done and the results delivered.
- Test messages, activity and channels so you can do more of what works, improve what has potential and ditch what doesn’t deliver results.
The bottom line
You probably don’t need to do more marketing. You need to make the marketing you’re already doing work harder. Start with the goal. Get closer to the customers you actually want. Be clear about why they should choose you. Then measure what happens and use what you learn to make better decisions.
Before you spend another dollar, ask yourself: “What are we trying to achieve, who are we trying to reach and how will we know if it worked?” If you’re not sure, talk to TGM.
If you’d like to discuss how we can help turn your business goals into a practical marketing strategy and creative campaigns that deliver the right results, we’d love to chat. Give Andrea a bell on 06 759 8959 or email andrea@tgmcreative.co.nz and let’s kōrero about how we can help the world discover you.
