How can marketing begin to understand what’s happening in the marketplace and what customers are looking for?
You have to assess what you’re doing inside your company and interview your customers to assess what their deeper needs are. That can be a very simple conversation. Most customers will help the client improve if the client takes the time to reach out.
You have to listen for it, but if you ask the right questions, talking to your customers can be paramount to understanding critical needs and how you can potentially identify opportunities that they themselves don’t even realize exist.
It can be beneficial to have an outside source do the interviews so that customers can answer anonymously. You will not yield as deep and as honest a response if the people answering the questions perceive that their answers will be directly associated with them.
How can this information help marketing more effectively uncover opportunities?
Say a company is in the business of HR psychology testing, but the test itself (to most buyers) is a commodity primarily used in recruiting or placement. If you ask what the tests ultimately do for their customers, they may improve their culture, reduce turnover, improve communication and productivity, and identify leadership, etc. You can then look at the byproduct of what the company is selling and package that into solutions, which you can use to penetrate the marketplace to sell at a higher level, generate larger deal size, penetrate a new market and even raise price points.
The idea is to break down current activities and assessments into things the company can do now, things they need to stop doing now and things they need to think about or rethink for the future. Disciplined marketing frames the conversation. If the CEO is given 50 items to consider from an assessment, there is no priority. Which ones cost a lot? Which are political time bombs? Which are culturally impossible to execute? Which require a fundamental shift in management structure?
An effective marketing department or agency will manage your brand, look for strategic opportunities to create barriers to entry for the competition, increase your price point or deal size through shifting the conversations, and find new revenue streams that make marketing an asset to your business and not a cost center.
Jonathan Fisher is CEO of BrandExtract, an integrated branding and communications firm that guides growing companies by providing strategic branding solutions, market changing positioning, strategic advertising, and social, print and interactive services. Reach him at (713) 942-7959 or (214) 770-7378 or [email protected].