How’s your perspective on your business? When you are evaluating your business position, especially when it comes to the effectiveness of your marketing efforts, your perspective will determine your actions or inactions. Perspective is a measured assessment of a situation from our particular vantage point. But what if that vantage point is not giving you all the information you need to make a sound decision?

Let me share a story of two perspectives. Imagine a black Mercedes sedan rolls up and parks along a street on a warm, sunshiny day. A lady dressed to the nines steps out of the sedan and enters a store. After a few minutes, a shabbily dressed man quickly approaches the car with a hammer and smashes the driver’s side window and unlocks the car. He lurches inside the car and grabs something from the backseat. The woman runs out of the store and begins to scream and cry uncontrollably as she grabs hold of the man. What is happening? It appears to be a robbery in progress! What should you do? You call 911 and alert the police.

From another perspective on the street you observe the same scene. You see the same woman drive up and park her Mercedes. After a few minutes, you notice some movement in the back seat. A child has been asleep in the car and has awoken, disoriented and confused. The child begins to cry and bang on the window. Then you notice something else. A shabbily dressed man is sitting on the front porch of a house beside the store where the lady entered. He motions to the child to settle down, but as he does, the child begins to have convulsions. The man runs into the house, brings out a hammer and smashes the car’s window, unlocks it, and quickly gets the child out of the back seat. At the same time, the mother comes running out of the store and rushes to her child. She begins to sob uncontrollably as she clings to the man and thanks him for saving her child.

What just happened? From one perspective, you see a felon committing a crime and from another perspective, you see a life-saving hero! A good perspective helps us understand what is really happening around us and keeps us from jumping to wrong conclusions. It is a reality check. Author Allen Klein says, "A little perspective, like a little humor, goes a long way.”

Have you checked your marketing perspective lately? Many times marketing takes the fall for the lack of sales in an organization. However, in many cases, the marketing has done its job in attracting people to your brand, but there is a disconnect between awareness and getting people to make a purchase. I find that there are three common issues that will lend perspective to your marketing efforts.

Defining who is a great fit

In marketing, we often make reference to target markets. This is simply a group of people who have something in common with each other that can be easily defined. It could be their demographics (i.e. age, gender, economic standing, where they live, etc.) or the type of job they hold, a hobby, an interest, or any number of things that bring people together. In every business, there are groups who are more prone to buy your products and services and others who are less likely to make a purchase. Yet, many businesses never think about the differences between one group over another. To add perspective to your marketing, you need to define which groups are a great fit for you and which groups are just a good fit – or not a fit at all. The great fit groups are your target market. They are the most likely to buy from you and should be the focus of your marketing efforts.

Getting your marketing roles in place

Another way to add perspective to your marketing is to understand the roles of different phases of marketing. Marketing is a very broad business discipline. Under the umbrella of marketing is a whole host of activities that all culminate in helping your customers buy from you. But not all marketing activities lead directly to your cash register. For many businesses, especially those who have a rather long sales cycle, keeping the customer engaged while they are making their decision to buy or not is critical to your bottom line.

We like to break marketing into three distinct phases: Awareness, First Time Sales, and Customer Retention. When we are working with our business clients on these three phases, we help them set goals for each phase. For instance, Awareness Marketing is designed to get a potential customer to recognize your brand, to clearly understand what you’re selling and to believe good things about your brand. First Time Sales Marketing is designed to make an offer to the prospective customer that is hard for them to refuse. We try to make it easy for them to say yes. But we can’t get them to the point of saying yes if they have no awareness of your brand. Awareness Marketing goals have to be met before First Time Sales offers can be made. Likewise, Retention Marketing is all about making customers for life. One phase has to be complete before you can move a customer to the next phase. Understanding where your customers are in this process will help you gain perspective on the effectiveness of your marketing.

Social media is not a sales tool

Let me illustrate what I am talking about. Social media has turned the world of communications on its ear. It is an effective way to get information about your company and your brand in the hands of the masses. However, social media is not a sales tool, it is content marketing. Content marketing typically belongs in the Awareness Marketing phase of a marketing action plan. It is designed to inform your customers, not to sell to your customers. I often hear customers say they thought something they posted on social media would bring in more sales. That’s not the role of social media. If you think a Facebook "like” is the equivalent of a customer ready to buy from you, think again. It is intended to lend credibility to your brand, which has its own value in accomplishing Awareness Marketing goals. Take if for what it is.

Engaging with customers is crucial to making a sale

The third way to add perspective to your marketing is to engage with the people who buy from you. In our electronically connected world, person-to-person engagement is still important for several reasons. First, you can get a much better read on what your customers really want from you if you talk to them rather than expect them to tell you via an electronic medium. We were made to interact with each other verbally. There is something about talking to someone that will help you pick up on little nuances of the way they think that you will never get in written communication. Marketing is built on these subtle cues. Secondly, people have a tendency to buy from someone they know and like. If you take the human element out of the equation, you have made your product and service offerings a commodity. Then it comes down to how cheaply you can sell your wares and nothing else. That is a bad place to be in business because there is always someone who is willing to undercut you. It is not only your perspective you have to be concerned about in marketing, it is also your customers’ perspectives of you. How they see you is impacted greatly by your relationship (or lack of relationship) with them.

After you gain a vantage point that gives you a good perspective on marketing, you can make decisions that will impact your bottom line. Make sure you have covered your angles before you make any marketing decisions. It is crucial to your business.