Trust in the formula
YEARS ago I created marketing plans for organisations and I tended to follow a formula.
The first question I would always ask was, ‘where do my customers hang out?’ These days, it’s increasingly on social media. But this cannot be the end point of inquiry. People continually want to engage in different ways. Simply having people follow your channel also does not mean they are seeing or engaging with your content. I have seen a lot of businesses spend a lot of money hoping to get traction, but not really knowing how to achieve results. Each social channel has sophisticated analytics tools and if you don’t know what you’re looking for it can be like looking for a needle in a haystack.
So I still look to a traditional marketing communications plan to inform my strategy. Because while the media has forever changed, the process of engagement has not. At the core of this is that people are unlikely to purchase from you unless they trust you.
Take your customers on a journey from awareness to brand advocate (the marketing holy grail).
AWARENESS: Start with a blank piece of paper and list all the activities you could do to build awareness for your brand or product - how do you help people understand what it is you do? You might have heard the term ‘top of funnel’; this is all about building awareness and is likely to include things like content, blog posts, video stories, sponsorships and public relations.
CONSIDERATION: Look at what would make a customer consider your product or service. This is about identifying if the customer has a perceived need. ‘Perceived’ is the critical word here because at this stage of consideration you are building trust but also informing them about why your product solves their problem.
PREFERENCE: What activities would see people develop a preference for your product or service over another? This might be the work of your sales team, a referral program, or perhaps customised and personalised communications based on what you already know about the customer.
TRIAL (TRANSACTION): The most important element of any structured plan, of course, is the element of ‘purchase’. But this cannot be the end of the story. This stage is like dating – a test, a trial to see if you are who you say you are.
CUSTOMER OR CLIENT: The goal is to have someone become more than just a purchase ‘activity’. The opportunity here is to create a brand experience that not only rewards’ the customer or client for that single transaction, but inspires them to come back again and again. This stage is about building relationships.
ADVOCATE: The goal of any good marketing plan designed to attract loyalty is advocacy - moving transactors into customers and having them become a walking, talking, physical or digital advertisement for your brand. Social media provides an opportunity for customers to say what they really think via reviews, and even if they are not all glowing, this is your chance to respond and interact with your customers. Never delete reviews – how you deal with the negative will have just as much - and often greater - impact on your brand value and levels of trust.
It’s up to us as business owners to give our customers something worth writing about, or Instagramming about. This is where social platforms adds real value, unmatched by any other form of media because they’re, quite literally, in the hands of your customers.
Naomi Simson is the founder of RedBalloon, and the cofounder of The Big Red Group, the third largest experience marketplace in the world. She is the author of two best sellers, Live What You Love and Ready To Soar, and appeared on Shark Tank for four seasons. In this series we present some of her key learnings on how she grew her businesses.