Lecture 4 - Understanding Customers

How To Promote Yourself In 6 Easy Steps

The advertising world is crammed full of people advertising, shouting, persuading, talking, singing, telling us, showing us how things will improve our lives, making offers, offering bundles of products, making things faster, cheaper, more luxurious, more famous, celebrity endorsed, 15 minutes of fames, league tables, charts, price comparisons, two for one, BOGOF, lifestyle, environment, diet, save the polar bears, latest information, new tour, limited edition, must have, high quality, on time, internet discount, easy payments. 0% interest, group bookings, interactive, designer, fashion, experience, mind-bending, local, global, faster, better, full service, guaranteed, contract, budget, premium, cash only.
How are you supposed to be heard when you are just one small voice, you are new to the market and have no money...
You need to understand the difference between the different maarketing methods. You need to know their streghts and weaknesses and how they will relate to your audience.

Many small businesses look at their marketing in terms of their own viewpoint of their own business, practice or service. So, in order to announce that they are new, they do something introductory, as they grow, they do something more mature and assured and as they become famous they reckon that they probably don’t have to promote themselves any more because everyone knows them and they will pick up business by word of mouth. Then their relationship with you develops but, rather like personal relationships, before they commit to you for the long term, they will need reassurances and encouragement, reciprocity and signs that they are valued by you.

This ongoing introduction of new customers bring an on going need to meet your customers needs and therefore an ever changing and moulding company. Different types of marketing strategies will attract different customers. You can see these different activities happening in TV advertising with businesses like O2, Honda, Morrissons and so on. Their messages are mulit-layered because the communications are complex.

Here are the ten basic marketing methods which could make up your Marketing Communication Mix.
The Internet
Some people believe that using solely the internet for advertisement will work, however the internet is only a medium not a promotional method. You need to work out who your work will appeal to...

• Advertise using banners
• Will you draw people into your practice and ask them to engage with your work through a blog
•Will you simply exhibit your work on a community web site
•Will you employ’ personalised selling’ in the way that Amazon does by allowing customers to have ‘accounts’ on your selling site.
•Will you pick up new customers through web site maximisation
•Will you encourage use of your website by offering online discounts that are not available from your workshop or your market stall
•Maybe you will use your web site, bog or Twitter as a public relations tool to change people’s perceptions of you
•Perhaps you will build relationships with people by inviting them to interact with you in some kind of forum such as Facebook.

Do Nothing

Whatever you do, DON'T do nothing. Nothing will bring you NO results. No one will know you exist. Imagine if Tesco or Morrissons had never opened a second store nor advertised their low prices to a wide audience.

Get Their Attention
•Memorable business card
•Advertising
•Events
•Radio interviews
•Write articles
•Run a blog
•Exploit social media
•Publicity

Raising awareness in people who have not heard of you before. Relationships with customers are the same as with new friends. First they need to be interested in what you do, then they need to get to know you, thirdly they must trust you. But how do they get to meet you in the first place?..


• You have to be visible.
• Attend events, introduce yourself to people and, if there is some interest, take and give a business card.
• Network, as they say
• Write articles in a magazine about your specialist subject. This will attract people who share your point of view
• Run a meaningful blog that will attract like-minded people
• Most importantly – CONTIBUTE TO THE BLOGS OF OTHERS. Don’t be passive.
• ALWAYS GIVE MORE THAN YOU EXPECT TO RECEIVE – We like generous people.

Build Their Interest
•Web site
•Portfolio
•Information packs
•Catalogue
•Curation
•Exhibitions

Make your self readily available, keep your work with you electronically. make your work easily accessible and network.

Convince Them

• Artist statement 
• Recommendations 
• Testimonials
• Awards 
• Community engagement 
• Professional bodies 
• Charity events

As interest grows about your company people will want to know more about what you do and what the benefits would be to them if they were to do business with you. They will want to know about your reputation because if you have a bad reputation doing business with you could damage theirs.

You need to make them aware of our values, sell yourself, you need to engage with the world around you.

Make your offer irresistible 

• Value proposition
• Pricing strategies
• Packaging
• Try before you buy
• Recommendations
• Differentiation

So now they like and trust you, now you must persuade them that you are the best that they can get and that you will be there to support them in the long term.

Close the sale 

• Convenience
• Buy it now
• Right place, right time
• Delivery
• Personal selling
• Interactive website

To close the sale you need to summarise what you have offered to them..
Is there anything I have missed?

Is there anything else you need?

Does the offer suit your needs?

Can I help you to sell the idea to your colleagues by making a further presentation?

Does the price fit your budget?

Can you tell me who I will be liaising with in your organisation as I execute this project?

Can I help you with Marketing to your customers?

Is there any reason why we should not proceed?

Are you ready to sign the contract now?

Shall we put some dates in our diaries for progress meetings now?

Reinforce 

• After sales service
• Advertising
• Public relations
• Longevity
• Merchandising
• Maintaining contact
• Building relationships

Make sure this relationship is a long term commitment. 

Keep up your public relations activities to give your customers something to talk to others about.

Give them new reasons to do business with you by introducing new ideas from time to time. 

Ask them to help you develop new ideas

Work together with them to explore mutually beneficial opportunities 

Make your customer your business partner. 

AIDA - Attention, Interest, Desire, Action

The steps of the sales cycle

Target your market

Defining your customers... to save money you need to advertise effectively to the right places, so they will be seen by the right people.

Publications that sell advertising give you all the right information you need to decide weather it is the right place to advertise in and to reduce the risk on your part. 

You need to think and know about things such as...

• How many copies they sell
• If they sell it nationally or globally
• What their readers are like.

It is also useful to know what the focus of the magazine that month might be. Most monthly magazines publish their monthly themes about 12 months in advance of publication. Picking the right month with the right theme can help to maximise sales and publicity.

People are very diverse, they may seem simple on the outside, but look at the above diagram at all the different things about this woman. How would you go about attracting a customer like this? 

Let's say she reads things such as, gardening, nature, ecologist, gardeners world, the guardian, novels

and

listens to things such as, BBC radio 2, BBC Leeds, opera, theatre.

There is a wide range of advertising methods that you could apply to reach out to such people, you just have to know as much as possible about your target audience to reach out to them in as many ways as possible.

Media usage

• Newspapers
• Magazines
• Radio/ TV
• Internet
• Social media
• Trade magazines
• Public space advertising
• Parish magazine

You need to capture your audiences attention on an area in their lives in which you can contribute to.

B2B - Business to business

Business to business marketing is a lot easier. The focus of the business interest is much clearer. The biggest consumers of creative output is the Public Sector. Free lance work appeals to a lot of businesses, for example, looking through the yellow pages as all the different departments in the Leeds City Council that could use your skills of outputs is staggering:

• Museums
• Hospitals
• Schools
• Care for the elderly
• Parks and gardens
• Highways
• Public health and sanitation
• Libraries
• Art galleries
• Public events and festivals
• Housing

Consumer segmentation

• Demographics
• Geographical factors
• Lifestyle
• Media usage

Putting yourself in your audiences shoes can help you relate to them better, ask yourself these questions:

1. What kind of people are they; what business sector are they in?
2. Whereabouts are they located at the time you want to communicate with them?... at home, in the office, in the car, walking in the street?
3. What is their lifestyle or what are their values?
4. What is their media usage with regards to my kind of work?