Marketing in the Digital Age
AHTD
The Fundamental Marketing Things Apply in the Digital Age
Marketing is still marketing in the Digital Age because people are still people. That means that the important basics for formulating a marketing strategy won’t change just because electronic communication is part of the mix.
Here are seven Timeless Marketing Principles that have not changed and are important for your marketing success.
Ultimately folks do not care about your product, they only care about what it will do for them. That's why all your marketing materials, including your paper and your Web site should stress benefits. A benefit is not a feature. That's a characteristic of the product you’re selling or a characteristic of your company. A benefit is not even an application. That's what someone can do with what you sell them. A benefit is the difference that your product, bought from you, makes in your customer's life.
Here's the chapter on benefits from my book, What's the Big Idea?
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This is the business-to-business equivalent of “different strokes for different folks.” In consumers sales there's only one buyer. In industrial sales there are multiple buyers. There is the Economic Buyer (also sometimes called the Ultimate Decision Maker), the Technical Buyer, the User Buyer and the Coach. Each of them needs to see personal and corporate benefits. You also face the special challenge of selling both products and engineering services with differing benefit mixes and buyers.
Miller and Heimann's great book, Strategic Selling, is now available in an updated edition.
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You’ve heard that marketing is a numbers game. That's true in part. You have to reach enough folks to find enough who are interested to discover the ones who are ready to buy and capable of doing so. What's often not said is that this process takes time.
The Digital Age Marketing Matrix shows the process of moving from ignorance to becoming a repeat customer. The movement is divided into three basic stages. You'll find the Digital Age Marketing Matrix on page 4 of the handout.
In the Perception Stage your objective is to increase your visibility in the customer's mind. The process enters the Persuasion Stage when the prospect is ready to buy. Your objective is to qualify the prospect and persuade the prospect to become your customer. Once they are your customer you want to keep them and do more business with them. That's what the Permanence Stage is all about.
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New business costs more money to bring in. In addition, the longer a company stays as your customer, the more they are likely to buy. Effective marketing programs pay special attention to ways to make sure that new customers become repeat customers and to increase the business of current customers.
Fred Reichheld of Bain and Company produced an excellent analysis of why this works. The book is called The Loyalty Effect: The Hidden Force Behind Growth, Profits, and Lasting Value.
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This is Pareto's Law, which is also known as the 80/20 Rule. It's usually stated as: “You get 80 percent of your business from 20 percent of your customers.” Whatever the actual percentages are a small portion of your customers will account for a disproportionate share of both revenue and profit and a small portion of your prospects will account for a disproportionate share of potential.
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You have to be able to tell customers and prospects why they should buy from you instead of from your competition. In the Digital Age, that means that you have to differentiate yourself from your local competition, but also from direct marketers such as Automation Direct. It's important to convey your difference message in all of your marketing, including your online presence where you and the competition are only a click apart.
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The classic Profit Impacts of Marketing Strategies (PIMS) study identified the key driver of profitability as “perceived value in the target market.” The means you should define your target market carefully and work on both delivering high value in that market, but also telling your customers and prospects about it. There's a review of this book on my site.
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