Your Mission Begins
You look at your response rates and it’s not happening. There is a secret code that carries a message that's so important that your business survival hangs in the balance. As your strategic marketing consultant I'm sending you on a mission. Your mission is to break the secret code and use it. Stand by with your Lector or your decoder ring - you have 10 seconds. The code is: YCDBSYA
Tick - tick - tick! Did you figure it out? It means “You can’t do business sitting on your ass.” Don't mean to stun the delicate, but that's what it means.
There was a little sign stuck on the wall next to my father’s desk that he looked at it every morning for 45 years - YCDBSYA. It reminded him that his business revenue, profitability and growth didn’t come from his office. They came from the customer’s office. The customer is looking for someone to show up and do all the right things to make it happen.
You Can’t Do Business Sitting on Your Ass
Chances are your organization uses one of three marketing strategies:
- Interact
- React
- Don’t Act
If you Interact, you work proactively with customers and consumers to create a buying-and-selling environment. This is a partnering situation that stimulates change and growth.
If you React, your marketing decisions are ruled by an outside force - markets, changing needs or desires, and finances. You start out behind and stay behind because you are stuck on the “effect” side of cause and effect. Most businesses operate this way and are feeling the consequences now. When they choose to drive customer-focused involvement (interact) instead of simply selling whatever product or service comes next (react), that's when they will exert some power in the marketplace.
When you Don't Act it is the marketing equivalent of medicine’s “watchful waiting.” Many companies never innovate or introduce a new product or service. The idea is to reduce risks and let another company take the chances and spend the development dollars. If there is sufficient demand, the copycat company imitates, gets in quickly and skims off a little piece of the action. The problem with Don’t Act is that it doesn’t really reduce the risk at all. Remember the customer or consumer doesn’t know you are watching and waiting. Your lack of action can be easily misunderstood. Don’t Act can be quickly interpreted as Don’t Know. And even worse, Don’t Care.
Get Out and Interact
Obviously, your company has a far greater chance of survival and prosperity by getting involved, communicating and interacting with the people who control the money you need. But exactly how to do this is not so obvious. Today, there is an insidious tendency to assume that having a web site, sending an email, introducing a marketing campaign, or holding an event or meeting will result directly in sales and revenue. Let me be very clear on this next point. They won’t and never will.
Each of them is only the set-up or preparation to generate sales or revenue. At best, they gain a moment of attention or focus on you and your company’s product or service - and have no doubt, it is only a moment. What you do during that moment (and more importantly, what they do) makes all the difference. It is essential to be creative and strategically “get out of your office” and into theirs.
But Internet Marketing Does This For Me
Dedicated Internet marketers claim that they don't have to make calls or actively sell because they reach a gazillion people every month. Well there is a difference between raw web traffic and interacting with potential customer. Example Alert! There's a business near a major interstate in Atlanta that has a giant inflatable gorilla on the roof. Each week well over 100,000 people see the gorilla. Think of the gorilla as SEO. It attracts attention and makes sure that as many people as possible notice the business. Still, seeing it and noticing it are passive. This guy has to actively pursue and attract customers to persuade them to stop, look, consider and buy.
Conversion is nothing more than aggressively engaging potential customers and earning their business. Just like that gorilla on the roof you still need to understand what they need, interact and persuade them to stop, look, consider and buy.
Go Get the Business You Need
Let your customers create the market - First, invest the time to learn where they are going, the results when they get there and what they need to make it happen. Then, get involved and provide incremental value along the way. Bring together all of your creative resources and have your solution ready when they need it. Find ways to be innovative and interactive in how you deliver.
Reduce the choices - There is a big difference between a focused set of options and the inability to clarify your offering. When there are too many choices there is no clear point of difference. Your customers are looking for ways to simplify the process of deciding what to buy. If you have more than three choices, reevaluate your offering and make it easy for your customers to buy what you’re trying to sell.
Go to the customer - Unless you are Amazon.com don't expect the Internet to do all the work. In sales, an email is better than nothing. A telephone call is better than an email. Face-to-face has the highest success rate and ROI. In marketing, target the message. Make your website interactive and go to the heart of the customer’s need. Make it all about what the customer has to gain. Make a strong, unique promise. Ask them to do something. Follow up, follow up, and follow up. Successful interactive marketing depends on the constant give-and-take of information. It’s cohesive. Exciting. Well-planned. Every interaction builds and strengthens the relationship.
He Who Hesitates Is Last
Let me hang up my marketing consultant hat and make a suggestion. Your consumers and customers won’t wait. Their needs, goals and objectives can’t be put on hold while you hesitate, ponder or schedule the next 10 meetings to consider the same old options. Cut to the chase. Ask, explore, gather the best thinkers and capitalize on their best thinking. Then develop the product and service in cooperation with the people who hold the money. Your sales efforts will be more effective, your marketing will be more productive, and your speed to market will be accelerated.
Of course, none of this can happen until you break the secret code and follow the message. That little sign next to my father’s desk was right.
YCDBSYA
Quick Note: My Dad is 88 and we visited him yesterday (11/22). I told him I used his secret code in an article. He went to his desk, shuffled through the drawers for a moment and brought out the YCDBSYA sign - he still has it. He reminded me once more that the idea behind the code kept his business successful from right after WWII until he retired, at 79. The code works!
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Andy Johnston is an multi-faceted communication professional with deep experience from strategic planning, to messaging, to marketing, to media, to events, to training, to creative direction … and there are several other ”to’s.” Andy is known for his energy, creativity and his unique ability to discover the key results that must be generated – and then to develop ingenious ways to engage and motivate audiences. Positive business results are the objective. He believes that one of the most important results is an enjoyable experience for everyone involved. Andy is a principal partner at Think! Consulting Group and The Idea Group.
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