Marketing Tips

Start Marketing Professionally

Many non-marketing professionals think marketing is about brochures, advertising, PR and websites. They spend money on these forms of "marketing communications" and then wonder why sales do not follow.

Here are some tips to help you approach marketing as a marketing professional would:

Analyse your customer base - Maintain a spreadsheet listing of companies by sector, by job title and most importantly, identify how they heard about you. Continually monitor this to get a true picture of your customer profile.

Reverse engineer the buying process between you and a customer. Break it down into steps from first enquiry through to sales. Identify at what points the customer got excited about with your product - was it the demo? Was it your impressive client list ? Was it because of your own expertise in this area?

Conversely, identify any areas of concern a customer might have about your product or service. Potential issues should be dealt with positively e.g. "You are a very small company" - Marketing response "Our size means we offer a flexible service, you can always contact me directly and our prices are more competitive due to lower overheads.

Build marketing messages highlighting the pluses identified in (2) above, and combating any minuses also identified.

List your client portfolio. Remember a client is a client regardless of order value.

If possible, compile testimonials from satisfied clients or influencers. Don't try to make these up yourself. You may be pleasantly surprised about the real reasons your customers chose you.

Develop short case studies about solutions you might have delivered to your customers. Quantifiable benefits are always very impressive e.g. proven ROI, reduced time, reduced costs etc. as a result of a customer using your product or service.

Thank you for today's session, I found it very useful and motivating personally.

Cormac Ó hAodha
OISÍN, Irish Language Consultancy & Translation Services.