Three Essential Things Your Marketing Must Do

Do you ever feel like something is off with your marketing? Maybe your name is out there, but it isn’t leading to sales opportunities. Or maybe you stir a lot of people up with your marketing, but they ultimately buy from your competition. 

If you want your company’s marketing to be effective, there are three essential things that must happen. 

These three essentials are like a three-legged stool. All three are essential, and your marketing stool will feel shaky and unreliable if a leg is missing. 

#1: Build Brand Awareness

Quick, when I say “donut shop” what brand do you picture first? Most readers either pictured Dunkin Donuts or Krispy Kreme, unless your area has a strong local or regional competitor. This is brand awareness. 

Whatever product, service, or experience you sell, you want people to think of your brand first. This happens by choosing a market you can afford to saturate and running brand awareness marketing consistently, every day. You want to rewire the brains of your prospective customers so that when they hear a word (like “donut,” or “attorney,” or “assisted living”), they think of your brand.  

If your brand was a household name like DD or KK are for donuts, you could… maybe… survive on brand awareness alone. But this isn’t the best strategy for major brands, and it’s downright impossible for the rest of us. 

So let’s explore the other two legs of the stool.

#2: Reach Buyers

In addition to building brand awareness, you should have a plan to reach people who are buying now. Even without strong brand awareness, you have a shot if you can put your marketing in the right place at the right time. This is the “direct response” strategy of marketing—you do marketing designed to generate a measurable result in terms of sales or leads. 

How could I show up #1 in a Google search for a certain keyword… or deliver my message to people I know are likely to buy? For example, a landscaper might run a campaign to reach new homebuyers, since new homebuyers are more likely to need landscaping. 

#3: Nurture Customers

One exceptional place to find buyers is to stay in touch with all those customers whom you’ve served in the past. Find other needs they might have. Get them to buy more frequently.  

You have an advantage, because if you served them well last time, you already have some trust established. Some companies have a deep book of past business, and they put all their emphasis on retaining and growing past customers.   

Which Piece(s) Are You Missing?

If your marketing isn’t running smoothly, it’s probably lacking in at least one of these three areas. Here are the problems you might experience with each missing piece. 

• • If you don’t NURTURE CUSTOMERS, then you will spend too much time and money attracting new business. You will feel like you’re stuck like a hamster on a wheel, always struggling to keep enough work coming in to hit your sales targets, while watching past customers walk out the back door.
  • If you don’t have a good strategy to REACH BUYERS, then you will struggle to afford your brand awareness efforts. You may see your name in all the right places, but you will question ROI, because it isn’t translating to sales / new business.

• • If you fail to BUILD BRAND AWARENESS, then your efforts to reach buyers will too often backfire. You may get in front of people who are ready to buy, stir them up, only to find they buy from another company that has stronger brand awareness.  

Don’t blur them together. 

Most people think they can do one of these things and accomplish all three. But it just doesn’t work, and it leads to frustration and discouragement. Your key to success is to think of them as three separate objectives. Develop three plans:  

• a plan to build brand awareness, 
• a plan to reach buyers, and 
• a plan to nurture customers.

Don’t be a perfectionist.

Simply start by figuring out which pieces are missing, or which piece is the weakest, and then get something simple in place that you can quickly execute to fill the gaps. With all three pieces in place, you will see significant improvement. 

Strengthen All Three Legs of the Stool in Our “7 Mistakes” Seminar
The latest version of our most popular seminar is built upon this three legged stool. 

In the “7 Costly Mistakes” seminar we provide a clear, simple plan to make your marketing more effective, with ALL THREE legs in place. You can register for an upcoming seminar in Northern Ohio, OR get instant access to a free on-demand version.

If your marketing efforts aren’t generating the results you want, maybe you’re sitting on a lopsided stool. You need a plan to accomplish all three of these important parts of the marketing funnel.