A business owner or leader can put a lot of money into a marketing budget. Expanding marketing content, improving search engine optimization, ramping up social media presence and exploiting public relations opportunities can do quite a bit to build up a company’s name recognition, thanks to increased visibility, and reputation as well. Another desired outcome of those activities, one that is assumed and, for some, goes without saying, is the desire to grow the company’s sales revenue. Not infrequently, business owners or leaders simply expect that heightening a company’s visibility among target customers is the foundation of an effective marketing plan and a welcome mat for more customers—maybe even high dollar-volume customers. After all, isn’t it common knowledge that visibility = name recognition = trust and that’s what motivates prospective customers to buy?

At least some of that assumption is true, but not all of it. Prospective customers may become familiar with your product or service when marketing action plans designed to increase company visibility, but for those who operate in the B2B sector, stimulating sales requires an explicitly articulated statement that leaves no question about your intentions. Failure to communicate your purpose can send you off-message and off-course and, surprise, undermine your bang for the buck—what’s known in polite circles as return on investment.

So if you want to go to Seattle, plot a course for that location and not San Jose, just because both cities are on the U.S. Pacific coast and you’ve visited San Jose a couple of times and like it. That you have the funds to work with a sizeable marketing budget, that does not guarantee you’ll use it wisely. Money is not necessarily the determining factor in B2B marketing outcomes and extravagant campaigns don’t always bring in an abundance of leads that convert to customers. If you’re hunting for customers, then hunt for customers, and spend what you can afford.

When you set out to create and implement a business strategy, confirm what you’re trying to do and why you’re trying to do it. From there, you develop whatever goal, so you can define what success looks like, and create strategies and action plans that will get you to the finish line. You also must recognize certain that certain strategies and actions, even if they can enable the achievement of other, similar goals and you’ve successfully used them before, those go-to strategies will take you in another direction if you have another intent and purpose. That direction may yield great results again, but not what you’re looking for now.

This all sounds very basic, but in order for a strategy to do its job, you must understand what you want to do and why you want to do it. If you’re on automatic pilot and attached to a go-to playbook of marketing strategies, get over it. Instead, keep at top-of-mind what you want to do in this instance and be guided by that purpose, your intention, and prevent yourself from getting lost in the woods. It’s about keeping your eye on the prize.

So is your marketing campaign about making your brand recognition more prominent, or are you trying to bring in new customers, or retain customers and bring lapsed customers back into the fold? Ask yourself some questions so that you’ll build strategies that are capable of doing what you want:

• Distinguish the desire for visibility, such as raising the awareness of your brand name in the marketplace and maybe also in your community, from buying intent, that is, appealing to prospects who are on a serious buyer’s journey and give them reasons to buy from you. If you’re hunting for customers, develop marketing messages and marketing content (like case studies) that make s persuasive business case for how your solution is effective for certain customer intentions.
• If it’s customers that you want, you can start by learning what motivates your typical prospects to check out your solution. What is the pain point or goal and what makes that need must-do and urgent? Also, what key words were used in the search and which of your competitors do they often research, as comparison?
• Calculate the volume and dollar value of the campaign ROI—e.g., after the campaign, or maybe at the six month mark, what was the sales revenue growth, how many new customers are on your list, how many returning customers did you welcome? Was your campaign worth the money and time invested?
• Know that companies that are high performers over time are not always the ones with the biggest outreach or customer list. Those owners and leaders are the ones who have gotten very good at knowing exactly who they are looking for before they spend a dollar trying to find them.

Customer acquisition is about targeting

So many business owners and marketers mistakenly think of customer acquisition as a volume problem—more leads = more sales opportunities. But sales is about quality, not quantity. As the Pareto Principle teaches us, you can expect to get 80% of your business from 20% of your prospective customers. In other words, selling is more about quality than quantity; targeting is how you bring customers who will do business and data show that acquisition is a targeting problem.

When you populate a customer’s info file, make note of buying history to see the patterns that emerge. What are the demographic traits do they share—what industry, what types of pain points or goals, what season—-and what picture emerges that allows you to identify who is most likely to buy, and buy again, and eventually become high-value long-term customers.

Finally, be aware that first-time buyers, whose relationship to your company might be “one and done” never to be seen again, is not the same buyer as your repeat buyer. The repeat buyer is different than the one-off buyer and is also not the same as your highest-value customer. Treating all of your customers as a single target audience could result in expensive mistakes when you want to personalize marketing outreach. It is imperative that you know who you’re talking to.

Analyze your best customers

Customer info is a competitive asset, and it’s more than record-keeping of sales you’ve made. Unlike the sales managers I worked for over the years, know that you’ll position your company to become (and remain) more successful when you broaden your perspective and allow your data to fulfill its potential—meaning, how about putting your data to work as a prospecting tool and not limit it to filling up pages of reports? It is possible to utilize your customer info to look forward and not just backward; predict the future and go beyond mulling over history.

Set up your analytic protocols to identify prospects most likely to buy when you study your best existing customers. They may not be your most recent buyers, but they will be your highest-volume ones and they come back again and again. What time of year do they do business with you? What industry are they in and how did they find your company? What they engaged with before they bought. That pattern, even at a small scale, is the beginning of a real targeting model.

Treat retention as part of growth strategy

Marketing does not end when the customer pays. Devise a post-sale customer experience that encourages your customers to make determines referrals on your behalf and increases the likelihood that they’ll re-new orders renewals and become repeat buyers. A customer survey can give you insight into how customers feel about your company onboarding protocols. Are expectations clear? Do customers receive value quickly once they begin using the product or service? Does anyone check whether the solution is working? If churn is an issue, can you learn why certain customers leave?

Make your value proposition easy to understand

Many websites tell visitors what a business does without explaining why prospective should choose it. The site will list services and products, owner’s credentials and years in operation, too. That info makes sense to include, as they infer capability and credibility— but it still doesn’t tell those on a buyer’s journey which kinds of pain points or goals will be (expertly) resolved and make a case to dig a little deeper and get more details, in anticipation of a purchase.

It could be worth it to ask a friend to take a quick look at your website, so you can ask what they learn from looking at your home page. Can they identify who you serve, the problem you solve and a Call-to-Action that makes them know what to do next? If not, the page may be asking too much from a buyer. If you spend the first 10 minutes of every call explaining what your company really does, your marketing message needs to be clarified and rewritten.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: © Grace & Family. Princess Grace shopping in Paris with her mother (wearing stole) Margaret Kelly (1962)