Feature:
Out of Mind is Out of Business.

The need to stay in touch with customers, to cultivate top-of-mind awareness, and to create preference for doing business with you has never been greater or more difficult to accomplish. With the advent of exciting new communication methods, the ability to communicate effectively differentiates winners from losers. Customers have an unprecedented number of choices in the marketplace—so the need to connect and be compelling is both imperative and urgent.

HOW TO CONNECT: Don't sell. . . Nurture. This powerful communication strategy aims at the core of why people buy. It's a way of connecting personally to build rapport and gently embed your brand in their hearts and minds, causing them to call you when they're ready to buy.

With each prospect and customer, teach them how to buy through ongoing, personalized correspondence and carefully sequenced touch-points. (You can automate many of these processes through technology.) People don't care what you know until they know you care. This simple idea revolutionizes the cultivation of loyal customers. Set yourself apart. Don't sell. Through a nurturing philosophy, help people buy.

HOW TO BE COMPELLING: You earn it. Your product or service offering is deeper, more relevant and a better strategic fit than your competitors’. That's because you know your customer--you've taken the time to understand their wants, needs and desires. You've analyzed competitive offerings and created a uniquely valuable solution. You operate with a true differentiator that customers admire.

Are promises of “highest quality” or “best service” good differentiators? No, they’re not enough. You sound just like your competition, which adds confusion to the purchase process, and leaves price as the primary decision factor. Give your customer tangible reasons to make emotional decisions they can justify logically.

HOW TO CREATE PREFERENCE: Live your brand promise. A well-articulated brand strategy is the foundation of every successful enterprise. It's no longer optional; it's required. Your brand strategy serves as a blueprint for management and marketing decisions. It articulates what makes you unique, supports long-term vision, explains why customers buy, and aligns all your employees with messaging elements to reinforce the values and principles your company stands for.

Your brand is more than your graphic logo or your positioning statement. It is about the experience of your customer. The single most relevant thing you can do is deliver a customer experience worth repeating. When you properly manage customer expectations and then exceed them, you create brand ambassadors. This voluntary sales force will validate and create demand for your business.

To summarize, here are two actionable takeaways; 1) If you're not making enough sales, you're not nurturing enough people, 2) If you want to improve your sales, change your marketing. The market has changed and so must you. When the market was good, you could exist without a refined brand strategy, without documented sales processes and without compelling messaging to build awareness, preference and a solid foundation for a customer experience worth repeating. Today’s market is less forgiving. Assuming failure is not an option, there's really no choice but to outsmart, out market, and out sell your competition. Do this and you won't be out of sight, out of mind or out of business.

Integrated MARCOM and GrowthANSWERS make profound contributions to client successes. We help emerging companies differentiate their offerings, build this quality into their brand architecture and create communication systems to connect, compel and build preference. Visit www.integratedmarcom.com to optimize marketing & sales processes. Visit www.growthanswers.com to innovate and execute a growth strategy.