If you had to list all the ways that marketing can help your company generate leads for sales, what exactly would your list include? Answering this question can only come from understanding the marketing pie chart – a breakdown of all the individual functions that make up a company's marketing mix. Most companies are unaware of what is included in this mix and even fewer know how to use all the tools that marketing provides. So, what’s included in this marketing pie chart?
1. Advertising: Don’t confuse advertising for marketing. It is only one part of marketing. Advertising is done after you’ve defined your market and your potential for sales. The key is to play to your strengths. Focus on your flagship product line – that product that instantly impresses customers. Next, define the opportunities for sales within your market. Finally, market your strengths. Simply put: Find the product you sell a lot of and then sell more.
2. Brand Management: Your company’s brand is defined by your most loyal customers. These are your brand champions. These are the customers who won’t buy from your competition no matter how competitive their offer is. Understanding why these customers are so loyal will help you increase brand awareness. Talk to these customers. Ask them what makes them so loyal. They may just tell you something about your company’s strengths that you never knew existed.
3. Market Data, Studies & Research: Understanding your market is much more than just knowing where your customers are and what they need. Having a market intelligence gathering strategy will allow you to identify competitor strengths and weaknesses. It will provide you with information concerning competitor pricing and strategies. It will help you understand your entire market – from your vendors and partners – all the way to your customers.
4. Pricing Strategies: Numerous studies have shown that individuals shy away from high and low prices. They want value and a competitive offering, but they don’t want to buy something too cheap or too expensive. The best way to justify a product’s higher sticker price is by defining the value of making the purchase. The best way to do that is by outlining your customers’ costs of buying from your company.
Remove your pricing from the equation. Instead, outline the savings your customer gets from placing an order. For instance, does your product help reduce costs and if so, by how much? Does your company have lower freight costs to and from your customer’s facility? Your product may have a higher price tag versus your competitor’s offering, but if you can demonstrate how your customers save by buying from your company, then you’ll easily win their business.
The above video is taken from: Sales Negotiation: Defend Price, Customer Scare Tactics & Managing Concessions
5. Channel to Market Strategies: How you approach your market will have a direct impact on your company’s sales, its gross profit and its market share. For instance, selling direct to end-users often means higher gross profit on sales. However, it can backfire if individual customers can only place small volume orders. Fulfilling low volume orders with multiple customers will increase your costs to sell and service those customers.
What about selling through distributors? A distributorship channel to market will allow you to ship large volumes of product to a single distributor. That distributor will then cover the costs of servicing a given market. However, this option involves depending upon that distributor for sales – never an easy thing to do as nobody will sell your product as aggressively as you will. Each option has a benefit and a drawback. Define your channel to market strategy and measure its effectiveness with a cost-benefit analysis.
The above table is taken from the post: Benefits of Customer Consolidation Through Multiple Distribution Channels. The article provides simple steps to determining the savings you can accrue by using a distributor as your channel to market.
6. Customer Service & After-Sales Support: Your strengths in customer service can mean the difference between business won or lost. It can mean the difference between increasing customer retention, or losing customers you’ve fought hard to win business from. Customers must come to see your company as a solutions provider. Again, talk to your brand champions. Ask them why they are so loyal and then use their answers to increase customer loyalty.
7. Public Relations: Don’t think of public relations in terms of large corporations. Instead, think smaller. Press releases help you announce new achievements. They can be used to announce new product launches, the signing of large contractual agreements, or they can be used to announce new strategic partnerships. Get the message out there. A good PR campaign can reach your entire customer base and generate solid leads for sales.
Marketing is a constant process, one where your company must use multiple strategies and approaches in order to increase the number of qualified leads for sales. In a number of cases, companies view sales as their “main problem,” when in reality, it’s not sales itself, but rather it’s the lack of opportunities to make sales. Increase the number of leads generated from marketing and you’ll increase your opportunities to make sales.
Leads only come from two sources: The first is from cold-calling, and the second is from marketing. Cold calling works, but it’s an invasive act. However, that cold call becomes more of a “warm call” when your marketing is getting that message out to customers. Unfortunately, advertising on its own won’t work. You need all of these aforementioned marketing functions to work in unison.
You can learn more about the above video by going to: Building a B2B Brand: Management and Strategies to a Better Market Position
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