There aren’t many positives about doing business in a challenging economy. Business is tough, cash-flow is tight, and consumers rein in spending. Thus many business leaders react accordingly. Anticipating reduced sales, they cut back on variable costs, including marketing, in order to deliver on their financial expectations. It’s indeed expected that when business slows, you have to cut costs. But is marketing simply another expense, or is it an investment? Ask yourself this: if you stop marketing, how will you […]
Category Archives: Marketing
Aug
3
May
9
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The opportunity in customer complaints
The way to satisfy customers is to meet their expectations and treat them well. However, no organization can achieve 100% customer satisfaction. There will always be some customer dissatisfaction due to a variety of reasons. Hence, it is inevitable that any organization that has customers will get complaints. But are there many dissatisfied customers who complain? Unfortunately, no. Many dissatisfied customers do not complain. And if a customer does not complain and has an issue that is not resolved, they […]
Apr
6
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4 strategies for marketing in a challenging economy
In a challenging economy, consumers become value oriented, set stricter priorities, and reduce their spending. Although it’s wise to contain costs, this is not the time for your organization to stop spending on marketing. Rather it’s the time to put customer needs under the microscope to understand how they have changed, and nimbly adjust your strategies, tactics, and product offerings to the new reality. Organizations may forget that, in prosperous times, rising sales are not caused by clever advertising and […]
Mar
22
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5 steps that buyers go through to make decisions
A successful marketing highly depends on understanding the decision making process of your customer. The more you understand this process, the better you can align your marketing strategy with it. The following are the steps a typical customer goes through to make buying decisions: Step 1: Do I Want it Concept: The first step is when a customer expresses some interest in a product. This interest can be captured using a spectrum between two extremes; desire and need. Examples: • […]
Jan
22
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Importance of Strategic Planning
In the last post titled “To become highly, focus on these activities”, there was a recommendation for us to focus more on activities that are important but not urgent. Strategic planning is a good example of such activities. Many of the day-to-day operational struggles we face in our organizations had their seeds sown in the past, when we failed to plan. Of course, no one can predict the future, everyday has its own operational struggles but the fact remains that […]
Jul
10
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Digital Marketing Measurement: 3 areas you must consider
Many businesses have little or no insight into how their website is performing. Measuring the performance of your website and digital marketing campaigns is critical to delivering results against your marketing objectives. The root cause of failure in most digital marketing campaigns is not the lack of creativity in the banner ad or the beauty of the website. It is not even (often) the people involved. It is quite simply the lack of structured thinking about what the real purpose […]
Apr
27
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The Importance of Buyer Personas in Digital Marketing
There will be no successful marketing without a good understanding of buyers. Hence smart marketers build formal buyer personas for their target demographics. Buyer personas are the individual and identifiable groups of people who buy your products and services. For example, a bank might have four buyer personas: employees, small businesses, students, and large enterprises. An effective marketing for this bank will target these four distinct buyer personas, with the goal of getting the employees to be saving more money, […]
Mar
18
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Marketing in tough economic times: Email as a vital tool
No one has control over the state of the economy. Now, the crude oil prices are low and the naira is devalued. Expectedly, companies and even individuals have pulled back and reduced overall spending. Times are indeed tough. However, this is not the time to focus less on marketing … rather the opposite. In reality, reducing your marketing efforts in tough economic times is the last thing you should do. Rather, it is recommended that you change your approach by […]
