Zenworkz Blog

The Key to Finding Customers – A Deep Understanding of what makes them tick!

Successful small businesses continuously seek feedback and a deep understanding of what makes their customer tick. This helps them anticipate evolving customer needs and wants to help them fine tune their product and services offerings.

Market Intelligence is an activity that all businesses, whatever their size, should engage in to answer the questions of “who, what, how much” your customers buy, “when, where” and, what is happening in your market?

At a fundamental level gathering Market Intelligence is as simple as talking to your customers, asking them about themselves, what they like, their issues or problems in their business; and storing that information. Then to be used to inform product or service development decisions and marketing campaigns; identifying trends and preparing your business for whatever the future brings.

No customer is wholly satisfied with their situation, because if they were satisfied, nothing would ever change. Insecurities cause dissatisfaction which then motivates us to pursue actions to change the status quo. If you want to write a marketing message that resonates deeply with your customer, you have to tackle their dissatisfactions as well as their wants.

Overwhelmingly, what people are worrying about is finding the right customers? And it helps to know what they’re willing to do to resolve this.

Use this approach to build a clearer profile of your ideal customer:

What price are they willing to pay?
Are they willing to shop around or make an immediate purchase?
How desperate are they?
Do they need a solution immediately or over time?
How much do they want to work with you compared to another business?

Customers sometimes have different needs and therefore are attracted to different offers. In creating your USP or Value Proposition, you need to satisfy the following:

be distinctly superior to other offers available,
be highly valued by a sufficiently large customer market,
it’s possible to communicate it in a simple and impactful way,
is not easily copied by your competitors,
that the target customers will be capable and willing to pay,
that you will achieve additional profit margin as a result of being different.

You cannot position yourself as the preferred solution if you have not deeply understood your customers needs or frustrations, nor can you build rapport without being absolutely authentic. What are their frustrations and how could you reduce or eliminate them?

With the answers to these questions, you can create marketing plans that have a balance of strategies for attracting new customers as well as retaining existing ones. You will know what areas you need to work on and what to constantly keep on top of to avoid losing customers.

Evolving and tailoring your business marketing message and offer for your ideal customer builds trust, and trust creates raving fans and advocates. Customer advocates will promote your business to potential customers; the very best way to find more customers.

When was the last time you asked your customers how they feel about your products or services?

About the author: Teresa Bassham is the boss lady of Zenworkz Authentic Marketing and educates businesses to think, create, engage and optimise their marketing effort. She coaches customers in strategies for traditional and online marketing; and implementation. If you would like free how-to-do-it-yourself marketing resources or to subscribe to free e-news about all things marketing, please visit the website:

http://www.zenworkz.com/

For daily marketing tips and references, connect to our fabulous community on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/Zenworkz.Authentic.Marketing

Advertising / Online Marketing / Promotion / Social Media — No comments
16
May 13

SEO or Google AdWords? Plus 8 Tips to Promote your Website Effectively

Let me first start by explaining that SEO (search engine optimisation) is the process of improving the ranking of your website in search engines via the ‘organic’ (unpaid) listings. The principle of SEO is to ensure your website ranks highly for keywords that people are likely to type into search engines when looking for a business like yours.

Optimising your website content and design helps to drive qualified traffic (what they are searching for you offer) to your web pages and ensures that people interested in your products and services can find your business online.

With Google AdWords (paid) listings, you are simply buying traffic to to your website, either through pay-per-click or other forms of advertising. But it’s expensive, and getting more so every day for the competitive keywords. It’s also complex and whole books have been written about how to manage the intricacies of Google AdWords. The bottom line is, before you even think about paying for AdWords, you need to ensure that your website is inviting to the people who are interested in your product or service.

Tip 1. The first place to start if you are just creating a website is to make sure that you have a keyword in your Domain Name – either the name of your Business or as a description.

Tip 2. Find a way to get a dot com (.com) domain and if your business name is not available, be creative rather than grabbing the dot net (.net) and then competing for ranking against a dot com with the same name.

Not sure what your keywords are?

Tip 3. A good place to start your keyword research is with the Google Keyword tool. Designed for AdWords advertisers to find keywords, you can also use it for your own research. Keyword research is the foundation of your website’s on page SEO.

Steps for finding keywords:

Brainstorm a list of possible combinations of words people might use to look for your type of business, product or service, including brand names, generic names, geographic location, service descriptions or area of expertise.
Go to the Google Keyword Tool and enter these, choosing Australia as the country and both Broad and Exact as the search results.
The Keyword Tool will give you lots of suggestions based on your seed keywords.

Tip 4. Once you have your keywords, what do you do with them on your website?

Think about your site content – use authentic and original content, use key search words in the text and make sure you have H1 headings and preferably H2 sub headings as well, all containing keywords.
Pay attention to keyword density, and keep it low. It can be irresistible to stuff your keywords in wherever possible but with semantic search (Google now tries to figure out the meaning of your site when it spiders it), keyword stuffing will do you more harm than good.
Internal links – when you write a related post or article on your site, link your keyword back to another article on your site. Building internal links helps Google find other areas of your site and reinforces you as an authority on the topic.

Tip 5. Create a strategy for your site design which includes creating a sitemap – a page that includes links to every area of your site. This helps the search engines find every area of your site.

Tip 6. Think about the customer who will use your website and what will be easiest for them to buy your products or services. Make a ‘call to action’ and relevant conversion for every page – don’t force your potential customers to make extra clicks.

Tip 7. Leverage your strengths – if writing is one of your strengths, then make sure you have a blog on your website. Remember blogs don’t just have to be just written words, showing your pictures or artwork can still tell a story on your blog. If you are a photographer or artist, make sure you have a Pinterest account linked to your pictures and ensure that all your social media platforms are updated for the audiences they serve.

Tip 8. Always check the ranking of your site as you continue on your journey. You should rank No 1 for your business name and possibly, your name (especially if it’s unique). But the important goal is to rank on the first page for key search terms in your business category, because that is where you will be competing for potential customers attention. If you want to rank well on your own name (because your name is the business), then make sure there are multiple platform link opportunities for people to see your name; like Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Youtube, Twitter and multiple online directories entries – it all helps.

Finally, after following all these tips, sign up and use Webmaster Tools to verify ownership of your website. This tells Google about your website. Sign up for Google Analytics and include the code in your website, even when there’s no traffic, there are many opportunities for education by using these tools.

Google is such a wonderful resource, if you are thinking of building a website or you want to know how to rank well on Google – you only have to seek their advice and the best part – it’s free.

Love to know whether this is helpful or if you have other tips that are working for you?

http://www.zenworkz.com/

For daily marketing tips and references, connect to our fabulous community on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/Zenworkz.Authentic.Marketing

Business Transformation / Coaching / Mindset / Yearly Business Review — 5 comments
08
May 13

How to radically alter the potential of your business

Some one moderately famous once told me: “Immersing in a sound structured process of examination and reflection, conducted by a skilled professional has positive spin offs”. I have been reflecting on that and the positive reaction that always happens when clients start working with me.

The structured process of thinking about themselves, their business, looking at their strengths, imagining a new future, triggers such positive actions and feelings that circumstances will change, and clients do become more successful in their business. The action of working on your business radically alter the effectiveness of your mind and the potential of your business. This occurs because:

We are challenging your mind. Neuroscience has now proven the old saying “use it or lose it”. The process we go through uses your mind productively to learn new skills. The benefits of increased mind function is an elevation in feelings of positivity, that more things are achievable or possible.

We begin with the end in mind. To begin with the end in mind means to start with a clear understanding of your destination or purpose. To know where you are headed, is to better understand where you are right now and what steps will be needed to continue in the direction for positive results. My coaching process fosters a mindset of outcomes focus and optimised marketing, that will help you create solutions, and not keep you stuck in the problems of your business.

Reflection is the key to changing mindset. The process of finding quiet time for reflecting on your current business situation and the negative responses that comes up, provides insight about what you need to change. Through my coaching we work on a positive mindset combined with effective marketing, because it will be 80% of your success in business.

Positive thinking is at the forefront of every great success story. The mind must believe it can do something before it is capable of actually doing it. By being aware of your mental self-talk, your thoughts, and being honest about your current situation; through reflection and answering questions about yourself and your business – it’s amazing what insights you will be provided.

Without awareness and giving yourself an opportunity to examine your business and learn new skills, you’re not likely to be able to do something about your business situation. If you don’t like the results you are getting, if you aren’t achieving your business goals, then knowing yourself, your strengths, and what you’ve been doing in the past to influence that situation is key. My structured process reveals both your personal and marketing barriers to business success. It helps you take control of what you can control.

There is no need for unconscious or disengaged marketing in 2013. Smart businesses make conscious, mindful marketing a part of their daily working lives.

Remember, if we’re unable to learn about ourselves, how we work and maximise our strengths, how are we to help ourselves excel at the business we have chosen?

Love to know what you think? Please leave a comment below.

http://www.zenworkz.com/

For daily marketing tips and references, connect to our fabulous community on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/Zenworkz.Authentic.Marketing

Attracting Customers / Authentic Marketing / Authentic Message Creation / Authentic Values / Inspiration — No comments
02
May 13

Great Quotes for Marketing!

Welcome to the Marketing Quotes that I have created over the last year.

Dream. Believe. Plan. Create. Succeed.

Observe the masses, then do the opposite.

Customer Focus: Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.

’Those who tell stories – rule the world’ ~ Plato

Life is like a rainbow. You need both the sun and the rain to make it’s colours appear.

Rejection can sometimes be the Universe’s way of saying ‘wrong direction’, find another way. ~ Unknown

Dream the impossible. Seek the unknown. Achieve Greatness.

The Facebook Paradox: The attention economy is not growing! That means we have to grab attention that someone else has today!

To be successful, you must surround yourself with positive people and seek advice from capable, trusted sources.

About the content creator: Teresa Bassham is the boss lady of Zenworkz Authentic Marketing and educates businesses to think, create, engage and optimise their marketing effort. She coaches customers in Strategies for traditional and online Marketing; and implementation. If you would like free how-to-do-it-yourself marketing resources or to subscribe to free e-news about all things marketing, please visit the website:

http://www.zenworkz.com/

For daily marketing tips and references, connect to our fabulous community on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/Zenworkz.Authentic.Marketing

Integrated Marketing Strategy / Marketing Mix Strategies / Marketing Plans / Setting Marketing Strategies — 2 comments
01
May 13

The Artists Marketing Strategy Conundrum Solved

For artists and creatives the tricky marketing question is: are you producing what the customer want and needs; or producing what you prefer to make or produce; or a bit of both – it’s the ultimate marketing strategy conundrum?

Artist and creatives would say that they make unique products that attract purchasers and that they produce what they are creatively inspired to make. Artists understand that in many businesses producing what the customer wants and needs is critical, however what they make and offer is unique, it is the ‘product’ of their creativity and they never really know who will want it or need it.

Most artists and creatives have their own style and that style evolves often as their “business” become more successful, so by becoming more successful – is the customer influencing the artists style? There is also a set of customer needs and wants in terms of prompt delivery, and price when they chose to purchase from an artist.

Are artists and creatives an exception to the marketing strategy norm because they are driven by their passion to create? How does this relate to classic marketing strategy that suggests that the customers needs and wants should determine what you offer the market to satisfy them?

Many artists and creatives believe they can manage both. The classic example is a Mum who develops her own creative product because she can’t find a product that satisfies her or her families need. Her product is then seen by other Mums looking for exactly that same product. A gap in the marketplace is filled, a small niche market is created – a small business is born. I have heard these words so many times “I just sort of fell into it and it grew from there!”.

So, is it possible to give customers what they need using your skills, knowledge and satisfy their needs with products that you love and believe in? Of course it is.

The most vital step in marketing strategy development for any artistic or creative business is to understand the needs and specific motivations that underlie the customer behaviours you wish to influence. This will only be possible when the artist or creative has sold their ‘products’ to a range of customers. Understanding these customers better will enable the development of targeted promotional goals and greater sales.

Even artists and creatives are constantly getting feedback from customers and discovering what “product” customers are more willing to buy. Providing a range of ‘products’; and the quality and value customers want is a critical first step in marketing. Otherwise, you will be facing an uphill battle if you only provide something that you want to produce; and then always trying to convince someone to buy it.

Ultimately, it is the job of marketing strategy to define how marketing will support the achievement of artists and creatives business goals.

If you are an artist or creative business, I would love to know your thoughts?

About the author: Teresa Bassham is the boss lady of Zenworkz Authentic Marketing and educates businesses to think, create, engage and optimise their marketing effort. She coaches customers in Strategies for traditional and online Marketing; and implementation. If you would like free how-to-do-it-yourself marketing resources or to subscribe to free e-news about all things marketing, please visit the website:

http://www.zenworkz.com/

For daily marketing tips and references, connect to our fabulous community on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/Zenworkz.Authentic.Marketing

Action Plans / Attracting Customers / Marketing Plans / Setting Marketing Strategies / Yearly Business Review — 4 comments
24
Apr 13

Sounds a little crazy but is it time to stop the busyness?

When you have a vision of how you want to make a difference in the world through your business, you can become overtly obsessed with finding customers and sales.

You do everything that the ‘experts’ tell you – you are on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Community Engine, go to Networking events, joined the Chamber of Commerce – post, blog, comment on everything and anything; but it still may not get enough customers to pay the bills.

Feeling a little desperate, you ask and listen to the advice of valued friends, networking colleagues and kindly marketing, PR and business ‘experts’, read copious blogs, hoping that someone will give you enlightenment, a way through and that all important result – more sales. You become overwhelmingly busy trying many different strategies and tactics, dropping them quickly when results don’t turn out like you expected. Increasingly feeling like you are wasting time, which only increases your feelings of frustration, because you know the customers are out there but you don’t understand why they aren’t buying this fantastic opportunity?

From my extensive experience with small business startups, when marketing activities become reactionary, it will feel like you are drowning, always treading water to keep your head up and keep breathing. Every new tactic is a floating piece of wood that you cling to, but underneath the surface you are working your legs franticly just to stay afloat – does this sound like you?

The good news is that there is a buff Bondi life saver waiting to save you. The bad news is you may need to stop all the busyness, rethink your current strategies, narrow your focus to the highest priority activity that will give you the maximum impact; and have clear goals and an action plan. Simple right? It depends. How are you going to feel if you stopped all the busyness on social media channels, after you have objectively assessed that it’s not bringing you customers or sales?

We have been brainwashed to a certain extent to ‘keep calm and keep on engaging’, keep churning out the remarkable content through social media channels; rather than objectively assessing our ROI and it’s validity to achieve our business goals: life long customers who pay us well, and building our fledgling business.

By narrowing and highly targeting your business focus, it will empower you to see results quickly. Seeing results will lift your flagging spirits, put a smile back on your face, get your creative juices flowing again, and boost your results.

How? By simply taking timeout of the busyness and working on a priority action plan – one with a very narrow focus with no more than one or two objectives – sounds crazy but it is liberating – trust my experience, I am a Marketing Coach and I’m here to help you! Is it time to liberate yourself, your busyness and your demons?

Let me know how you are doing, and if applying this approach will help you?

About the author: Teresa Bassham is the boss lady of Zenworkz Authentic Marketing and educates businesses to think, create, engage and optimise their marketing effort. She coaches customers in Strategies for traditional and online Marketing; and implementation. If you would like some free how-to do it marketing resources or to subscribe to free e-news about all things marketing, please visit the website: http://www.zenworkz.com/

For daily marketing tips and references, connect to the community on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Zenworkz.Authentic.Marketing

Coaching / Mindset / Value Proposition — No comments
17
Apr 13

Focus on your Strengths to be Successful

When I begin a coaching journey with a new customer, I get them to complete a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) Analysis on themselves and their business. A SWOT analysis is a fairly simple, low cost way of assessing work preferences and current business situation.

It presents information that is vital for both parties in developing business and marketing plans, enabling the coached customer to focus on transforming strengths into capabilities, matching them with opportunities in the marketplace.

There are other practical applications from completing a SWOT analysis. The more you focus on your strengths the greater your strengths become. It is a solutions focussed approach which understands that setting objectives in the weaknesses area are not likely to be successful or completed for a long time.

So how do you identify your strengths? If you have a partner, they would be the first person to ask, although you might not like what you hear. If you need to make this assessment by yourself, a good way is to think about the activities you do that make you feel invigorated.

Strengths are tasks or activities that you always do first because they are enjoyable or easy; or because you love doing them. When you focus on your strengths, you do the activities that give you energy and drive, so you don’t want to stop doing them. Have you ever been totally engaged in something you love doing and were shocked when you realised how much time had past? This is working with your strengths.

The reality when you are starting out in a business is you do have to do a lot of activities that do not energise you. This is unavoidable until you can build your business and outsource tasks to those who are energised by tasks that you dislike.

A business should be built around a product or service that really works for you, energises you, is easy to do, and has good customer demand. Working this way will provide you all the energy you need to build a base of customers that adore your product or what you do, because you can do it better than anyone else.

It sounds really simple and many are surprised when I recommended working with their strengths and not focusing on their weaknesses; but it’s how great businesses have been built successfully for decades.

Any questions or comments, please feel free to leave a comment here or on Facebook?

About the author: Teresa Bassham is the boss lady of Zenworkz Authentic Marketing, and is passionate about educating business professionals to create their differential advantage, attract more ideal customers and create a marketing plan to achieve success. She coaches customers face to face, online and by phone – if you would like to request coaching – please contact me.

For daily Marketing Tips visit and “like” my Facebook page:http://www.facebook.com/Zenworkz.Authentic.Marketing

Authentic Message Creation / Branding / Social Media / Trust — No comments
10
Apr 13

How to craft the right brand message on social media

In your marketing journey to attract and keep new customers, unique and authentic brand messages work best on social media.

Technology is moving so fast, you must understand and optimise every interaction with potential customers in a way that establishes positive, emotional responses to form meaningful relationships with your business, brand and message.

Getting the brand message right for what your business offers is vitally important. Not only does it provide the basis for your personal relationship with your customers; it answers the question foremost in every potential customer’s mind: Why should I buy from you? Over time, these customers can become your best marketing advocates and promoters.

How do you create the right brand message? The focus is “social” and where you can, to project your fabulous personality into your brand message. Any unique and authentic brand message must be simple. If you can’t explain it simply, then you don’t know enough about what motivates your customer to buy. The step then must be to research your ideal customer, create a profile of who they are and write specifically to them.

As I have said many times before, ‘benefits’ and not features will always grab your target audiences attention. Your brand message should demonstrate that you understand your customers situation, either the problem they need to solve or a want they must have, – the “benefit’ to them. You can then construct an offer that helps them to address their situation. Approaching it in this way could be the single deciding factor for them choosing your business offer over someone else.

Finally, without trying to sound like a broken record, people like to buy from people they know, like, and trust. Building trust begins with sharing your story, and showing your values, so you attract prospective customers who can relate to you. Explaining why you do what you do, helps them understand what it’s like to deal with you and trust you.

In today’s crowded marketplace, with new competitors emerging from around the world, distracted audiences, and almost saturation marketing of products and services; it is more important than ever to ensure that when you have the attention of a potential customer, you are able to offer a compelling and authentic reason for them doing business with you.

I’d love to hear your thoughts? Please feel free to leave a comment or question below.

About the author: Teresa Bassham is the Boss Lady and Chief Coach of Zenworkz Authentic Marketing, and is passionate about educating small and medium business professionals to create their authentic marketing and brand message, attract more ideal customers and create a marketing plan to achieve success. Please contact me if you’d like help creating your brand message on social media. Visit my website for free resources and subscribe to weekly e-News updates on all topics related marketing.

For daily Authentic Marketing updates visit and “like” my Facebook page.

Defining Products and Services / Marketing 101 / Marketing Mix Strategies / Marketing Plans / Positioning / Pricing / Selling — 2 comments
20
Mar 13

The difference between the marketing process and selling

I want you to think about the elements that need to be in place prior to the sale of anything. Let’s use the example of a set of biodegradable bamboo pegs. Are you selling pegs or a complex set of benefits? Are you selling a tool that hangs clothes on the washing line or the feeling that your customer gets from buying an environmentally friendly and sustainable alternative to plastic? Is this a choice about convenience or values? The marketing process for each is quite different.

If someone only needed pegs as a convenience, they will throw them in the shopping trolley during the weekly shop without even thinking about them. They will be cheap, mass produced in India or China; and made of plastic that will never break down in our life time. Both the bamboo and plastic products fulfill the need to hang clothes on the washing line, but only one product is a conscious choice based on a set of values and complex benefits. Why develop biodegradable bamboo pegs as a product when the alternative product is cheap, and easily available? Because there is an obvious customer demand, and this product development was part of a marketing process.

Sales happen when all the elements of the marketing process (product/service development, market offer, pricing, distribution channel, positioning and marketing communications etc) have been strategically thought through and delivered.

There is no such thing as a product or service that sells itself – it must be marketed. Its easy to think that if your customers love your product or service, that will automatically lead to many more potential customer sales! For sales to be successful, product or services must be marketed to potential customers you have identified as having similar want and needs as customers who love your products or services.

The marketing process is important in the promotion of intangible and tangible customer benefits. People make buying decisions using their emotions, based on benefits and not as you would expect, in a logical thought process. That’s why there are sales of biodegradable bamboo pegs.

People then justify their decision with facts. The emotions and feelings are the hooks, the facts are the rational justification for the purchase decision. There are rational decisions for buying supermarket plastic pegs.

The marketing process helps you answer the customers “what’s in it for me” question, including perceived value. The value to the buyer has to be greater than the asking price and that is why they will still buy the more expensive biodegradable bamboo pegs over it’s cheaper rival.

All the strategic marketing tactics discussed here are delivered through the marketing planning process. However, here are five tried and tested tactics that will improve your sales performance:

Develop 30-day sales goals each month

Break down how many sales you need each month to meet your planned revenue targets. Determine exactly how many face to face meetings, calls, emails and blog posts you need to have, make, send or write to generate your target sales.

Make the first task of every day, activities to create sales

Focus each day, first thing in the morning, on actions that are “sales development” or will definitely lead to sales. Do this offline and don’t go online* (*read getting distracted) until complete. You should be doing at least 60 minutes of sales development activities per day.

Ask existing customer for referrals

Ask for referrals, they can always say no – but be honest – you need the work or you need to sell.

Prepare for “ Sales Objections”

Write down all the “sales objections” you get from potential customers and then script positive responses – so you are prepared for them when they are spoken, it will be the difference between passive and active selling that will get better results.

Follow up old sales leads

Get out every old business card, brochure or any other sales lead that you may have and start calling these contacts. Take out any old enquiries that had not been converted into sales and follow up on every single one of them.

Let me know if find you find these tactics helpful or have some others that work well for you?

Please leave a comment below, it’s the only way I know you are reading my blog:

About the author: Teresa Bassham is the Chief Coach & Boss Lady of Zenworkz Authentic Marketing, and is passionate about educating small business professionals to create their authentic marketing message and attract their ideal customers. She coach customers face to face, online and by phone – if you would like to discuss your needs - please contact.

For more daily Authentic Marketing updates visit and like my facebook page:

http://www.facebook.com/Zenworkz.Authentic.Marketing

Customer Service / Marketing Analysis Tools / Marketing Mix Strategies / Relationship Marketing — No comments
13
Mar 13

Why the Elements of the Marketing Mix are so important

Consideration of the marketing mix elements and how they fit together is the basis of your marketing program. For a long time we called them the 4P’s because it was easy to remember.

Why do we call it a Mix?

All elements from the Marketing Mix have an interaction on and with each other. If you have a product, you will have to create a price and sell it. The way you communicate this product will make it either more or less visible to your target market. The price you ask for the product will infer a special quality. If you communicate effectively about the product, it will need to be for sale in a place where your target market has access to it. These elements, product, price, place and promotion all influence each other.

In addition to the traditional 4Ps it is now customary to add 3 more Ps to the mix to give us 7Ps. The additional Ps have been added because:

marketing is far more customer service oriented than ever before;
the service sector has come to dominate economic activity; and
more products are augmented with service elements to gain competitive advantage and differentiation.

The three extra Ps for small or micro businesses are:

Physical and visual environment

Consumers typically come into contact with products and services in a number of ways:

Your retail units where customers expect a high level of presentation in modern shops, they need to easily find their way around the store, and expect a good standard or presentation.
Your website greets visitors with highly focused information that aids their product or service research and evaluation process, as well as providing them an easy way to engage with you and buy your products.
Your social media and blog posts reinforce your brand and demonstrate your broad knowledge regarding what you offer. Your engagement works to get potential customers to take immediate action and buy something, or at least start the buying cycle by contacting you.

Provision of customer service

Customer service lies at the heart of modern marketing transactions as a mechanism for building long term customer relationships of mutual advantage. Customers are loyal to businesses that serve them well, from the way in which a phone or email query is handled, the timeliness and reliability of product and service delivery expectations, and direct face-to-face interactions.

Processes

Good processes make marketing effective in a business. Processes for handling customer complaints, identifying customer needs and requirements, handling orders and product or service difficulties.

The 7Ps – product, price, place, promotion, physical environment, provision of customer service, and processes comprise the modern marketing mix that is relevant in the service industry, but is also relevant to any form of business where meeting the needs of customers has high priority.

In my experience, one of the most important reasons to use a marketing mix decision model, is when something doesn’t work as you thought it would. When you are not getting the result you expected, and are able to examine where the failure is and in correcting it.

Of course, when trying to balance the different elements, it is very important to understand the market in which you want to sell. You can see how each element of your marketing mix plays a specific role that works collectively with the other elements to:

Define the right offer and price
Establish awareness
Nurture the customer relationship
Get the desired sales response

Most small businesses understand the marketing mix; but finding the right marketing mix balance takes time to put together. As long as your customers are leading your marketing program, you’ll find the right mix every time.

Love to know what you think? Please comment below.

About the author: Teresa Bassham is the principle of Zenworkz Authentic Marketing, and is passionate about educating small and medium business professionals to create their differential advantage, attract more ideal customers and create a marketing plan to achieve success. She coaches customers face to face, online and by phone – if you would like to request coaching – please contact.

Zenworkz BlogAuthentic Marketing Coaching

The Key to Finding Customers – A Deep Understanding of what makes them tick!

How to radically alter the potential of your business

Great Quotes for Marketing!

The Artists Marketing Strategy Conundrum Solved

Sounds a little crazy but is it time to stop the busyness?

Focus on your Strengths to be Successful

The difference between the marketing process and selling

Why the Elements of the Marketing Mix are so important

Categories

Archives

Zenworkz Twitter

Zenworkz BlogAuthentic Marketing Coaching

Categories

Archives

Zenworkz Twitter

Tags