We’ve looked at the first two ways your marketing should produce results for your business. Now the third way is not an issue most of you will see coming. Quite simply, it’s not about how much this concept makes you in ROI.
The third way your marketing should produce results is in how it also saves you money.
Most businesses try to obtain as many customers as possible. While this is a workable concept for many, it’s not always the best for every business.
When was the last time you read a bad review for your business?
When was the last time you had an unhappy client or customer that just couldn’t be satisfied – as if they were almost looking to pick a fight or were never really going to be happy with your level of quality or service or whatever – no matter what you did?
This scenario plays out all too often. It’s not always avoidable, but in many, if not most cases, it can be dramatically reduced or even eliminated.
Your marketing is essentially your communication to your target market. What you say, how you say it, when, where, etc., all play a part in the customer’s perception of your business.
If you don’t effectively control and create that perception, you leave it up to the customer to form their own view.
This isn’t to say that you can literally force your fill on your customers so they throw money at you in a zombie-like fashion. Aside from ethical considerations you really don’t want that in the first place.
You want a customer that is happy if not thankful for your business. You need to earn it by meeting or exceeding their expectations – otherwise you’re pretty average and maybe below average depending on how serous your competition is in their marketing efforts.
Just because you are in business with something to sell doesn’t mean you deserve anyone’s attention, much less their money. SO it follows that if you want the ideal outcome for both you and your customers, you need to think about what type of customer you most want to do business with.
Quite frankly, the customer is not always right. This concept was given birth way back when customers didn’t know better and were under-served in a variety of ways due less competition.
Customers have grown increasingly smarter and more informed. They’ve also come to realize how valuable both their money and opinions are in the overall business survival landscape.
What customers now know is that their opinion and, more precisely, their criticism, carries more weight and power than ever before. And they even revel in flaunting that power over the businesses that slight them in any way.
The problem, of course, is that people on both sides of the dollar make mistakes. Things happen that are unforeseeable and unpredictable. Employers don’t control every thought or mood or situation employees might find themselves dealing with. Shipping, delivery and other services that might take place outside the scope of your immediate business can dramatically affect your business.
There’s this thing called weather…you may have heard about it. It’s also kind of unpredictable sometimes. But even unexpected traffic can be a seemingly simple and understandable issue that some customers think has almost ended their existence.
In general, most people understand or are at least willing to accept your problems as part of what you have to deal with in running your business. But from time to time there are those customers that just can’t let the slightest issue with their shipment, their order, their meal, their whatever, be anything less than perfect.
Here’s where your marketing should produce results for your business.
You should already know where the weak links in the chains of your business are. If you look at your delivery chain, raw or manufactured products/materials in, your products/services out, you can identify the majority of potential things that could go wrong.
Same goes for your staffing. Same goes for many electrical, water, weather, bills, legal and other issues. To put it simply, you should have a living list of every possible thing you think could go wrong and have a plan to resolve it if and when it happens.
If something happens and you had nothing on your list that came close to anticipating the problem, you or someone in your business stopped caring enough to avoid problems with customers. You will be amazed at how many potential problems you prevent by increasing your awareness of what those problems could be.
That’s because as you consider problems and what it costs you in time, money and resources to fix them, you’ll naturally start thinking about how to avoid them to begin with.
The more problems you anticipate and avoid, the more backup plans you have in place, the more smoothly your business will run with fewer headaches. It also means you’ll be able to assign more responsibilities (assuming you’ve made good hires) to others because there are guidelines to follow in those situations.
Oh, and you’ll sleep better at night, too.
But again, this isn’t about you. It’s about those pesky customers that think they are always right when they aren’t.
A major step you need to take for this is to take a very honest and deep look at yourself and your business. You must define how much you truly care about your customers and how much you care about the outcome of them doing business with you.
It’s not nice to say, but the truth is that some business owners really don’t care that much about the people they do business with. They just want to make a buck off anyone who will give them a buck. If the experience goes bad, that’s too bad, no one’s perfect.
From there the scale rises to and through those businesses who take great pride in what they do and offer. But even these businesses can be slammed by an irate customer, even when they had a minor problem – even when nothing went wrong at all.
The way to make your marketing solve customer complaint problems
By doing what we recommended earlier and listing what could possibly go wrong, then coming up with solutions and maybe multiple solutions as backup plans, you aren’t caught off guard. That can greatly reduce an upset in and of itself.
But what you need to do with your marketing is build in explanations and solutions to problems in the event they ever become issues.
One thing to note here is that you don’t want to set yourself up to be in a position of constantly defending your business. Since almost anything can go wrong in most any business, that should remain an ‘understood’ aspect of life in general. What you are doing is qualifying or disqualifying your prospects – who you want to do business with – through your marketing activities.
Some customer will never be a good fit for you. Others will always be borderline. Others will be good to great customers. Through you marketing you can more effectively ‘filter out’ those who you’d rather avoid doing business with you and those who you fell are the best fit and most likely to have a good outcome.
Let’s also make one thing crystal clear. We are assuming that you are not bigoted, racist, and anything of the sort. We assume you are in business to make a fair profit and provide a good if not excellent outcome for those who choose to trade you money for what you offer.
If that describes your business at a basic level, there’s no reason for you to not be as selective as you want to be. What we’re saying is that every customer has some level of expectation from doing business with a company like yours. If you can’t won’t or are not prepared to do business with every potential type of customer mentality and expectation out there, you need to let your marketing help you turn away the customers you don’t want toward the businesses that do want their money.
If your business currently has a fair amount of customer complaints or customer service issues, you need to very seriously consider what we’ve covered here. This can make an almost unimaginable difference for most businesses that can’t seem to get out from under their problems.
When you word your marketing messages to attract the type of customers you want more of, your business runs more smoothly. When you put together offers that attract the types of customers that are best for your business, your business grows with less effort.
Because every business is different it’s impossible to cover all possibilities here. But as a weak example, consider how car dealerships ‘set up’ their buyer parameters and segment their prospects.
When you see a car commercial with a crazy low interest rate, the fine print says you must have immaculate credit and/or put a truckload of cash as a down payment. We don’t approve of the way they downplay in a commercial with the fine unreadable print – you should be much more open with your approach – but it serves as an example as to how they are still qualifying a certain segment of their prospects AND disqualifying a different group that they might still be able to help, but just not with the best ‘low interest’ offer.
In other words, let your marketing message set the expectations of your new and current customers so they have a better idea as to what they can expect in certain buying scenarios.
In the long run, by segmenting and controlling who you get as customers, you spend less chasing customers you don’t want and don’t need. This improves your various customer acquisition metrics by reducing wasted ad and marketing spend.
Not sure how this might work for your business? Reach out to us with your questions. We’re always happy and eager to share a few ideas to get you started in the right direction.