It doesn't matter if it is the great alignment special we have going, the fact that we have now extended our hours to be more convenient or letting our customers know that we have just hired that high-end European technician we have been looking for, our improving circumstance will only matter to our customers if we can get the word out and get it out in such a way that it is relevant and only if it reaches our customers where they live (online, on their mobile device or in their mailbox) and only if we can actually get them to read it.
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Our perspective is not our customer’s perspective and what is obvious and important to us is not necessarily obvious or important to them. Marketing a winner is all about understanding our customers and would-be customers’ needs and expectations and delivering them as our new (and improved) reality. Marketing a winner is all about changing a customer’s perspective.
Marketing is a critical priority for most of us of the tire and automotive repair worlds, though most of us go about it in a disjointed and haphazard fashion. Marketing needs to be tied to our broad strategic plan and to be effective; marketing must be relevant, must be visible, must connect, must be measurable and must be managed. Too often we throw things out there just for the comfort of being able to say that we are actively marketing, but give little thought to who is out there, whether our message aligns with their needs and have no mechanisms in place to measure or manage the effort. With all that is riding on our marketing and as competitive as it is out there, it might be a great time to think about how we go to market, what our message is (branding) and think strongly about how we would measure success. As with anything in the marketing world, I would not make any guarantees but any effort toward bringing structure to our marketing and being strategic in these efforts, will at least have us aiming in the right direction.
Before we start throwing things at the wall so we can see what will stick, I might suggest our thinking about whom we are trying to reach. Not only will this help us define and refine the message, but it will have a huge impact on where and how we go about reaching them. If our marketing to date has been aimed at retaining our existing customers and we suddenly (or not so suddenly) note that we have a large senior population or college students that we want to target, we will need to refine our message to align with those demographics and we will have to be very careful about what media and marketing methods we use in reaching out to them.
One size does not fit all in the world of marketing and identifying your target group(s) is an important early consideration. Flooding social media sites, search engine optimization and making yourself more visible on the internet will likely have little or no effect in attracting those senior citizens at the retirement home but could have a dramatic impact among those college students, especially if you go the extra step of making yourself visible to those growing number of people signing onto the internet via a mobile device. Identifying who you want to have a conversation with and finding the best avenues in reaching them are important keys to marketing that winner.
Remember that if your customers are unaware that you are having the sale of the century, they will not be beating a path to your door. Our job in marketing is to make sure they are aware.
Don’t Retreat
An important step in this and in any marketing, is knowing where we are right now. What is our current car count, who is buying from us, how often are they coming in, why are they coming in, what things do I do well and what things could I do more effectively? Understanding this current state is critical for us going into any marketing effort for no other reason than giving us a baseline against which we can measure our upcoming marketing efforts.
Certainly if we invest a lot of time, effort and money into developing a new marketing strategy, we will want to know that it worked and was worth the investment, or that it didn't work and we need to try something else. If we can't establish our baseline and measure our performance going into a marketing effort, we have no ability to manage it and if we can't manage it, we shouldn't be doing it, even though it might be the greatest idea since sliced bread.
With no baseline and no ability to measure our results, we will not know if it is helping or hurting us and we will not know what our return on investment is. Marketing a winner is all about being able to measure the win.
In military operations you need to always be prepared to step back (not retreat) from failure and always reinforce success. Marketing is much the same. With our rarely hitting that grand slam the first time out, with that performance baseline established, we are able to identify narrow areas of improvement (which media, which message, what strategy) and have the opportunity to refine and improve our message and targeting. Marketing a winner is much more about hitting singles and doubles and avoiding strikeouts, than it is about hitting homeruns. Just like in baseball, marketing a winner is great presentation (pitching), getting on base, positioning yourself to score and taking advantage of opportunities that present themselves. It is also about attracting and pleasing those fans.
Before you make the assumption of what is important to your existing customers and what will attract new ones, my strong suggestion would be to ask. Surveying your customers, who presumably already know and like you, will not only let you know how well you are doing for them but will also give you insights into what will attract new customers. In the same way it will give you great insights into things that are upsetting your existing customers, giving you the opportunity to react and refine things before working to attract new customers.
You only get one shot at that first impression and there is nothing like polling your existing customers to get that message right and those improved behaviors nailed down. Marketing that winner is all about listening to your customers and being willing to change and get better. Customers can go almost anywhere to be mistreated. Marketing a winner is listening to your existing customers, reacting to their concerns and learning how to exceed not only their expectations, but those of the many potential new customers you are trying to attract.
In your efforts to successfully market a winner, there are few things more powerful than a message and a strategy driven by customer experience. Having a cheap oil change or alignment is one thing but knowing from surveys that convenience, quality or extended hours are more important to your customers is quite another. Marketing a winner is knowing the difference.
Good marketing is relevant, visible, measurable and managed. It is only a successful if it is a win for you and a win for your customers.
Our building a better mouse trap only matters if our targeted customers or would-be customers know about it and only if they need a mouse trap.
Who is the winner in your current marketing effort? What should we be doing about that?
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