This afternoon, I received an email which you could regard as efficient marketing.
I’ll use it as an example of marketing that is simply not effective. And I’ll explain why the difference between those concepts matters.
Hi Matthew,
It was really good to meet you at the Business Growth Show in Manchester last week. How did you find the speed networking?
Thank you for taking the time to chat; I really appreciate it. If you’d like a free tariff review on your business mobiles package, or any mobile phone advice at all, I’m here to help. Please feel free to call me on 0870 NNN NNNN.
I look forward to catching up with you soon.
Have a merry Christmas,
The trouble is, I didn’t go to that show. I registered, but wasn’t able to attend. Yet I obviously had quite an impact during the ‘conversation’ I apparently had with this chap…
Yes, it’s efficient to do a prompt follow-up, get the email addresses of the ‘attendees’, send an automated email, and ‘make them aware of what we do’. ‘Efficiency’ in this example equates to ‘cheap’ and ‘quick’.
But is it effective? Am I ever going to buy anything from this firm – or more importantly, from this person? The answer’s obvious, isn’t it?
So What is Effective Marketing?
It’s many things, but in terms of lead generation, being effective at marketing includes having ready answers to these questions:
- Is my approach accurately targeted to the right person?
- Am I addressing things that individual really cares about? Am I able to talk about their concerns in language that they would choose, rather than the everyday jargon I’m accustomed to?
- Is my offering relevant, timely, and appropriate to their needs?
- Does my approach adequately differentiate what I’m offering from the approaches made by my competitors?
- Have I considered whether the type of approach I’m about to make is the right way to begin to work with this potential customer, or is there a better alternative?
- Am I doing anything that might undermine my approach?
I could go on. The last point was clearly marked a ‘fail’ in this case, but as I’ve shown, it’s only one of several points that needs to be considered if marketing is to be truly effective. It will probably cost you a little more to have satisfactory answers to the questions I posed, but the return on your investment is guaranteed to be much better.
Oh, and all I’ve talked about is lead generation – and marketing is much more than that…