Straight-Talking Marketing

Marketing seems straight forward, right? You just promote your products in whatever form you decide best reaches your audience, flyers, business cards, a great website...and you're half way to decent sales.

Tuesday 11 March 2014

Right? This all depends heavily upon knowing who that audience is, where they frequent, and in past few decades, what they aspire to. Often businesses feel confident that they know the consumer well, and sometimes they do.

That said, generally it is never as easy or straight-forward as it sounds. In business cultures that don't encourage feedback, or place a high value on customer service (unknowingly feedback can often be viewed as negative criticism instead of the valuable insight into customer satisfaction and product utility that it is) it all gets much harder. Simplify it, and remember that marketing is the business of communications, first and foremost.

I look at websites all the time and wonder if there is awareness of the customer at all and whether businesses are aware of who they are communicating to. I often notice and admire the level of knowledge available about the product, which is reassuring in it's own way. However, this is not always enough (depending upon the product) and certainly not at the outset as the customer first comes into contact with a company. Best practice marketing is not ultimately about the knowledge of the product, even if knowledge has a place.

As a customer I want to know that the seller has an awareness of the product through the perspective of the customer. Indeed there are markets (and It can be shocking to discover) for which product knowledge or utility bears much less significance than the overall image or connotations a product has about who we are, our identity and the overall image. We live in an era of aspiration and, as such, we have been groomed to care less about the actual product and more about what the particular item says about what we have achieved.

We also forget that people who visit the website are users, not customers in the shop asking questions about a specific product. Nor are they readers with endless time to read all manner of blogs and updates. A great example might be Apple's emphasis on 'features and benefits', which informs the customer from their perspective what it can do for them, rather than dwelling upon specifications that don't really mean anything to the buyer.

Apple also rely heavily upon user feedback and recognise 'word of mouth' as a crucial aspect of any marketing strategy itself. They understand that customers can and do become ambassadors of their products. They listen to their customers, view their products through their eyes and expend serious energies responding. Great marketing is also about listening and letting the product utility do the talking for itself. There are markets for everything and not everyone will buy every product no matter how hard the sell.

Completing my doctoral study some years ago I discovered, along with other revelations of note, that no matter how hard Ireland has been sold over the years as a tourist product and in many instances over-sold, the honeymoon is over when the visitor arrives and realises this. Worst, a negative opinion is passed on to their friends, colleagues (ultimately potential visitors), and depending upon their overall experience (or exasperation) a return visit may not be likely to anticipate on the horizon. There are limits. Honour them and your customer to boot.

Marketing and integrity go hand-in-hand, and the customer is at the heart of everything. Straight-talking marketing.
Forget about selling me the cappuccino - double-whip with an extra shot, the semi-skim soy latte, the lite-mocha with vanilla syrup, when all I want is a black coffee.

coffeenosugar is a leading company in marketing with integrity. Straight-up marketing, helping companies know, communicate and build strong relations with customers.

Elizabeth Meehan,
coffeenosugar
info@coffeenosugar.co.uk
www.coffeenosugar.co.uk

Tuesday 11 March 2014