What makes up a good day? You
might remember a song performed by jazz great Ella Fitzgerald called "Blue
Skies.”
Blue
skies
Smiling
at me
Nothing
but blue skies
Do I see
Bluebirds
Singing a
song
Nothing
but bluebirds
All day
long
Is everything going your
way, especially when you are talking about your marketing? What exactly makes a
good marketing day? Is it when someone likes your social media posts? Is it
when someone wears your logo on their shirt? There are three things that I use
to define a good marketing day.
First, someone recognizes your
brand. This is more than acknowledging your logo. It is also knowing what you
do by remembering your tagline. A good tagline should define who you are and what
you do very well. It should be short and memorable, but it should also engage
the customer in an emotional way. It reminds them that you meet their needs and
it reminds them how your brand makes them feel. I was talking with a colleague
of mine the other day who gave me the current tagline for Reese’s Peanut Butter
Cups: "Sorry, not sorry!” It is a good day in marketing when someone recognizes
your brand and have committed your tagline to memory. It is an even better day
when, by their use of it, they make it part of the pop culture lexicon.
Second, it is a good marketing day
when someone transitions from being aware of your brand to showing genuine
interest in purchasing it. This is where marketing begins to sink its teeth in.
A million likes on your Facebook page does not sell a thing unless you can
transition awareness to first-time buyers. People will not buy unless your
marketing is giving them a reason to do so. A good day is when this transition
works and people want to buy from you.
Third, it is a good day when
satisfied customers begin to sell your brand for you. Say what you want to
about all the marketing mediums in our world, the best one is a happy customer
who is sold on your brand and talks to his friends.Especially in today’s
market, a happy customer is golden. An unhappy customer is destructive to your
brand. Make sure you meet and exceed your customers’ expectations and, when you
do, use it to help sell the next customer.
How do you get to the
blue-sky-good days of marketing? You do so with a strategic plan. In order to
make any of this work for you, you have to understand four keys to building a marketing
strategy:
- What am I really selling?
- Who are my best prospects and what do they need
from me?
- Who is my competition and what are they doing
that I am not?
- What am I doing that my competition is not that I
can exploit to distance my brand from theirs in the minds of my customers?
Put the answer to these questions
together and you will have the framework for a strategy to get people to recognize
your brand, take a chance and buy from you, and be so impressed they recommend
you to their friends. Work it all into a marketing plan and begin your journey
to the blue-sky days.