Consulting

Designing the Foundation of Your Marketing System:

The Foundation of your system represents the critical marketing components often overlooked by small businesses.  Often, they skip over these steps and move right to the tactics found in the three subsystems.  This is a big mistake!  Your tactics will lack focus and power and you won’t be able to maximize the value that each customer can potentially bring to your business.

It takes a great deal of time and thought to build a solid foundation for your marketing system.  But the good news is, once built, your foundation typically requires little or no effort to maintain.

1. Ideal Customer Profiles – This section defines WHO your Marketing System should be focused on. This step maximizes focus, revenue, and profitability while eliminating customers that waste your time, resources and patience.  Defines segments by factors such as geographic, demographics, values, behaviors and interests.  We also define motivations and buying processes, and rate them as to overall attractiveness.
2. Unique Value Proposition –  This critical section defines WHY your customers should choose you over your competition.  Sometimes this is an easy question to answer but more often the reasons are subtle and require customer research to really dig them out.  We also need to review your competitive research to see where we can best position your business in the marketplace relative to your competitors.
3. Branding – This section defines HOW you will articulate your Unique Value Proposition to your customers and prospects.  Effective branding is more than just a nice logo. If should concisely convey your Unique Value Proposition along with your “brand personality” in a way that is compelling to your customers.  Colors, tagline, and logo should all come together to create the right “face” for your brand and business.
4. Service, Product, and Pricing Strategies – This section defines WHAT Services and Products you should offer using WHAT Pricing Strategies. Based on “The Three Ways to Build Sales”, we develop strategies that allow your marketing system to maximize the value of each customer by creating offerings and pricing strategies that facilitate, 1.) getting new customers, 2.) increasing their purchase frequency, and 3.) increasing their average purchase.  In some cases, we may be able to integrate competitive research to develop these strategies.
   Designing Your Three Sub-Systems
   
   

   Your sub-systems are where the actual day-to-day work of your marketing takes place.  For most businesses to grow they need to be continually getting new customers, giving them a great customer experience and developing strong relationships with them.  Fortunately, digital marketing systems can greatly simplify many parts of this process.

5. New Customer System –  This is where we apply the Duct Tape Marketing Hourglass model™ to develop online and off-line tactics for getting new prospects to know, like, try, and buy from you.  We’ll give you a complete analysis of your online presence including a website review, analysis of your SEO, online reputation, and social media presence as well as how you stack up to your competitors in these areas. We’ll also include recommendations for a customized Digital Marketing System.Comprehensive Promotional Plan (Optional) – We can integrate online and off-line tactics to create a complete detailed promotional plan.  Includes specific content and messaging strategies along with specific media choices and costs scheduled on an annual calendar.

   Personal Selling Plan (Optional) – If you use inside and/or outside salespeople, we can evaluate your hiring, training, compensation, and selling processes and make recommendations for improvement.

6. Customer Experience System – This is the very heart of your Marketing System.  This is where you’ll earn loyal repeat customers and the referrals they generate.  We’ll map out your entire customer journey and evaluate all the “touch points” that create a great experience for your customers.  We’ll also set up a digital customer feedback system that will allow you to track your progress, discover touch points that need fixing, and determine what percentage of your customers are excited enough about your business to promote it to others.
7. Customer Development System– We’ll design on-line and off-line tactics for developing stronger relationships with your customers, building repeat business, and up-selling and cross-selling while encouraging referrals.