Total Marketing Solutions

Your marketing activities are no doubt already strategically aligned with your overall company objectives, but you can do even more to ensure that all your future marketing spend really is aimed at working more strategically for you.

Use marketing to ensure you effectively communicate your value proposition to your customers.

It’s one thing to recognise the tougher times you are operating in. It’s quite another to look at repositioning your product and service offering accordingly to drive sales.  As marketing strategy consultants, we are encouraging our customers to challenge what they do and to think strategically for both the short and the long-term. Now might be the time to look at allocating extra training and resources for your sales team to fully understand how to more persuasively explain how your solutions can help your potential customers. Now’s the time to help your customers to fight their corner. Today’s challenge is not necessarily about convincing buyers to sign on the dotted line. It’s more about helping your customers get the relevant approval to go ahead with buying your products or services.

This means making sure you can clearly demonstrate results by developing or enhancing any ROI tools you have that can demonstrate the value of investing in your products and services to your customer.

It means developing strong testimonials  and references to demonstrate a sound reason to buy. It means making it as easy as possible for your customers to buy from you. Now really is the time to balance a strategic marketing approach with a shorter-term tactical approach to generating sales.

By strengthening your relationship with existing customers, keeping up to date with any changes in the marketplace and constantly re-evaluating marketing strategies, marketing can become even more effective in the continued tough times ahead.

It might seem like a big ask, but now is the time to perk up and start to think about all the good things you could be doing to improve your market share and to drive sales - even in a downturn.

When everyone else is cutting budgets and panicking, marketing needs to act quickly to ensure future growth is achievable. Easier said than done, but as marketing strategy consultants, we are encouraging our clients to take a closer look at how they spend their business development and marketing budgets and to think about how they might do things differently.

For example, try focussing spend on tangible demand generation rather than brand-building. An overhaul of your approach to new business development will reap more measurable rewards at the moment rather than a corporate ad in an industry glossy. Or perhaps try focussing your sales efforts on individual accounts, particularly where your competitors may be weakening their grasp as they start to suffer from the effects of the recession.

If that’s too parochial, try just focussing on smaller market segments to achieve real market penetration.

As far as any weakening competitors are concerned, there may even be some who right now could be open to a merger or even acquisition. It’s a bold move but one that could pay real dividends when the market improves.

In terms of cost-free marketing activity, nothing can beat face-to-face contact with the senior people at your key customers. Whilst is does require time on your part, the value of sitting down with your key customers for a meaningful discussion on how you can work through the turbulent times together is immeasurable. Especially if your competitors are also doing their jobs and keeping an eye on any possible new business opportunities. You can use these interactions not just to build or shore up relationships, but also to glean valuable market information. And as the old saying goes, information is power.