Overhauling Your Marketing Efforts

I am launching a new series designed to help you completely "overhaul" your business. Last week we examined the issue of leadership and suggested that we all need a leadership overhaul. This week we will look more closely at the issue of overhauling your marketing efforts.

My research shows definitively that the marketing efforts of Okanagan-based companies are in need of a dramatic overhaul. To reach this conclusion, I recently reverse engineered how traditional market research is conducted. Rather than starting with a specific company, I started with companies in the Okanagan that purchase products or services from suppliers in the Okanagan. This confidential survey asked companies in six industries in the Okanagan what they thought specific local suppliers provided or did that was unique. The answers were revealing:

• 78% of respondents could not adequately describe how the supplier was unique. Most provided some general attributes that could have described any of their suppliers.

• 22% were clear on what they thought was unique about the supplier. However, in over 85% of these cases what the company said was unique about the supplier was not even a close match to what the supplier described as the major differentiators that made them unique or "set them apart" from their competition.

The inability of your customers to adequately describe what makes your company unique spells disaster for your business. In this era of intense competition and unlimited choice, customers are a precious resource. Now more than ever you need to demonstrate and communicate to your customers and prospects the key difference that makes your product/service offering unique, relevant and sustainable.

I wonder if any of your customers were involved in the survey? If this type of survey just happened to hit customers in your industry, what do you think they would say makes you unique? Going even further, what if I gave them a choice of telling me about a supplier that is unique in their mind, would they choose your company, a different supplier in a different product line or, worse yet, a competitor of yours?

Hopefully how uncomfortable or uncertain you feel right now will spur you to taking action to overhaul your marketing efforts.

Don't get stuck on defining in detail how radical your marketing overhaul is before you are prepared to embrace it. Fact based hard hitting research that gets to the bottom of these issues, is the most intelligent and rational way to define your new marketing direction.

Over the next few articles we will look more closely at my top five ways to overhaul your marketing efforts. Here is my #1 way:

1. Identify Your Uniqueness
Even if you think your business has "nailed your uniqueness", take the time to do the proper research. I am a fanatic about insisting that companies confirm through research what specifically makes their product and/or company unique. There are several fact-based methods to determine this:

• Research your current customer base and ask them what from their perspective differentiates your business.

• Analyze your competitors and their marketing messages. This is revealing as some competitors have very interesting ways of differentiating from you.

• Ask customers that have chosen to not do business with you, why? What was the basis of their choice and why didn't you stand out?

• Talk to companies in your industry and ask them which of their suppliers stands out as unique from their competitors. It doesn't even need to be in your product line offering. What has made these companies unique and why does the customer value this?

This research will provide you very relevant and revealing information about your business' current marketing efforts. It should be the start of a major overhaul of your marketing efforts.

If your marketing overhaul looks extensive and overwhelming, don't be too discouraged. A focused and differentiated marketing message could just be around the corner.

Next week we will look more closely at a very controversial topic that causes marketing agencies to scream in pain – how to measure and monitor the results of your marketing efforts.

Steve Burns, CA, CMC, CFP is the President and CEO of Burns Innovation Group Inc. and Steve Burns Inc. Chartered Accountant, which provide innovative consulting and accounting services to Okanagan entrepreneurs. Steve can be reached at 763-4716, via email at steve@burnsinnovation.com or steve@steveburns.ca

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