Welcome to Boston Tech Creative‘s brand new marketing blog. Enter your email below to get future stories, tips and reflections delivered straight to your inbox. New to the blog? Find out why I started this blog here.
Companies with excellent products and services naturally grow to be successful through their solid reputation and word of mouth. But what happens when revenue starts to plateau? Or start falling?
If this is your company, this is about the time you start looking more closely at your marketing. Don’t worry, it’s not only your company that has put marketing on the sidelines for too long…
- The messaging on your website doesn’t match the messaging you use in sales meetings, social media posts, etc.
- You use one-off marketing tactics: ads here, webinar there, social media every once in a while, a sporadic blog post.
- There is no clear correlation between all of your marketing activities.
- You don’t consistently get high quality leads because your marketing funnel has never really been set up.
If you nodded your head at any of these, you’re not alone. This describes most of my clients before they start working with me. Worse yet, because their current marketing efforts are not successful, they’ve lost a lot of potential business. If your ideal clients can’t find your or they don’t know that you can help them, it’s time to roll up your sleeves and dive into marketing.
The money leak must stop here. Follow these 5 marketing tips to take your B2B company from $1 to $100 million.
Tip #1. Find your sweet spot
Figuring out your sweet spot is the first step to great marketing. If you try to sell a service that someone else can do better, you will never win. How do you make your company the obvious choice in your potential customers’ minds?
Start by asking yourself these questions:
– What would your customers do if your product or service did not exist?
– What makes your product or service different from everyone else?
– What value does this differentiator bring to your customers?
– What type of customers in what market would benefit most from this value?
These questions will help you narrow down where your product or service should sit in the marketplace. Your sweet spot is your company’s market positioning.
Finding your market position or your sweet spot is key to growing your B2B company from $1 to $100 million in revenue.
Tip #2?Hone in on your target customer profile
Most companies market to a broad audience instead of targeting a specific customer profile. The problem is, if your message is too broad, it will speak to no one.
Unless you’ve got a large marketing department, it does not make sense to target multiple industries and multiple persons within those industries. To create content that will generate leads, it’s critical that you drill down to determine your select target customer profiles. It seems limited to just choose one or two types of people to target when it comes to your marketing. However, despite what you may believe you are not excluding others from buying your product or services. Instead, you are focusing your marketing dollars and message to create a direct emotional connection with your target customer profile.
A more targeted audience and message will attract attention from the right people, increasing your chances of making a sale.
Your target customer should also be your ideal customer. They should be the ones that will benefit the most from your product or service AND, if you offer a service, the ones you enjoy working with the most.
Tip #3. Be the guide to lead your customers to success
Most companies talk about all of the great products and services they offer, and their long history of success. Truth is, no one really cares about your company. They just really care about themselves and only become interested in your company when they see you as a solution to a problem they are having.
Instead of listing your accomplishments, invite your customers into a story with your marketing. And just as Donald Miller in Building a StoryBrand says, you are the guide and your customer is the hero. Your job is to guide your customers to become heroes.
To start writing your brand story, answer these three questions.
– Problem: What obstacles are getting in the way of what your customers want?
– Solution: How will you help them overcome these obstacles or solve their problem?
– Outcome: What will their life look like after purchasing your product/service?
These are the kids of things you want to be talking about in your marketing. By centering your messages around the customer, you’ll start to build trust and attract more potential clients.
Tip #4. Go from product-centric to customer-centric
It’s hard to talk about technical or complex products. That’s why so many companies end up approaching marketing through an engineering lens, focusing on being objective and technical with their content.
They are using words in their marketing that feel like one way communication (or what I like to call “corporate speak”). But we both know the goal of marketing is to start building a relationship with our customers.
Dale Carnegie said, “You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.”
The same principle applies in marketing. Take interest in your customers and they will come to you.
Knowing and speaking to your customers on a personal level makes them feel you are interested and you can reflect that in your marketing.
Don’t approach marketing as blasting messages to the world and stop talking about your product features and benefits. Instead, think of marketing as a friendly hello to someone you’d like to become friends with and start a conversation.
Tip #5. Constantly talk to your customers
As an engineer, it’s mostly you and inanimate objects. With marketing, you’re no longer flying solo. Frequent human connection is required. You’ve got to constantly talk to your potential, current and future customers.
Frequently speaking to your customers will help you:
- Keep a pulse on the market
- Understand where you/your product can improve
- Get new/repeat business
- Understand what your customer cares about
- Focus on the right marketing
The end results is that you will make better marketing decisions. Constantly talking to your customers is the final key to great marketing.
Marketing quick tip of the week: If revenue has flatlined or is falling, decide if you need to dedicate more time to focus on your marketing.
If you follow these five tips, I guarantee that a company with excellent products and services like yours will continue to build trust with your customers and accelerate revenue growth.
Your time and money are precious resources, it’s time to stop money leak now. Follow these 5 marketing tips to level-up your marketing and start seeing results.
0 Comments