When you develop a marketing plan, do you consider “What is my business goal of marketing?” The best answer I’ve found for that question is this: “Reaching the right customer with the right message at the right time.” The big problem is, since most marketers don’t own a working crystal ball, it’s nearly impossible to fit all three pieces of that puzzle together. At least not every time. Right?
If you just nodded your head in agreement, then you’re in the right place, because “Creating Biz Buzz” was developed to train marketers exactly how to reach the right customer with the right message at the right time, every time!
The Right Customer
One of the first steps business owners need to take when developing a marketing plan is to determine “Who is my customer?” This question can be answered through Market Research.
Back in the day before the Internet, we business owners were stuck with three Market Research options:
- Skip it
- Hire an expensive firm to do the research for us
- Survey our friends & family and cross our fingers that they represent our target audience.
Today, Market Research can be conducted primarily online, often with no cost to the business owner. Once you’ve researched your target audience, you can then create a “customer profile,” and, viola! — you know the right customer to address with your marketing efforts.
Taking your market research one step further will make all the difference when reaching out to your audience — discovering their biggest challenges, fears, obstacles and learning their greatest dreams, goals, and desires.
The Right Message
So, you’ve spent some time conducting market research and identified your audience, now what do you say to him or her? This is where many marketers, even professional advertising firms, fail.
The number one idea to keep in mind when creating content for a marketing campaign is that people want to know, “What’s in it for me?” The answer to that question is the Right Message to send.
Many marketing campaigns focus on the (insert long string of adjectives here) features of the product or service. The problem with that is, people in general don’t care about the product’s features — they want to know how using your product or service will BENEFIT them.
A marketing message focuses on how those features translate into benefits to the potential customer. In other words, how using your product or service will solve their biggest problems or help them reach their greatest goals.
The Right Time
This is tricky. And it’s one of the biggest reasons why many traditional marketing campaigns fail, because choosing the right time to place your message before your market is the part of this tri-pronged marketing approach where that crystal ball would come in handy.
Because timing a marketing message is so hard to determine, many traditional marketing methods, such as billboards, for example, are nicknamed, “Spray and Pray.” Suppose you’re a dentist. I mean, what are the odds that a potential customer will think, “I want to get my teeth whitened” at the EXACT same time she’s about to whiz past your billboard advertisement? And even if a billboard does attract attention, recording your contact information while speeding along at 70 miles per hour is dangerous, if not impossible.
When should you market to your audience? The answer to that question is, ALL the time. Always be there, ready to answer their questions and solve their problems WHENEVER they want the answer.
That’s where online marketing steps in. Today, somewhere close to 80 percent of people looking for an answer to a problem search for their solution online before taking any further action. Your job as a business owner is to have the answer they seek prepared and readily available. This is done by properly structuring and optimizing your website to make it easy for answer-seekers to find your solutions.
When you provide information to your target audience that answers their questions, you earn their trust. Then, who will they turn to when they have a big problem? A problem that requires opening their checkbook or swiping their credit card? That’s right — YOU! Because you’ve become their hero through the information you’ve provided that answered the questions they asked, when they asked them.