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1. You get to know your prospects. Marketing is about anticipating needs and meeting them with products and advertising that answer those needs. How can you anticipate what your customers want if you don’t know who they are at a core level?

2. You know what benefits to highlight. The features may be the same for everyone who uses your product, but the benefits to each group of consumers are different depending on their needs. One manufacturer of fishing tackle boxes realized 15% of sales came from women who were looking to organize their bead collections and was able to unlock a whole new market segment and advertise specifically to them.

3. You know what buttons to push. If your customers have a fear, you can offer a product that alleviates that fear. If they have a worry, you will know how to relieve their stress. Knowing the psychological factors that play into the buying habits of your target customer is critical to constructing effective advertising.

4. You know your competition. Learning who your customer is will teach you who your customers are currently buying from, or looking at. Knowing who your biggest competition is and knowing why they are succeeding or failing can help you look at your own business and know how to improve.

5. You know how to sell. You can create customized advertising and blog posts for specific customers, and you can be assured that someone who sees 10 generic ads and your specific call to action will almost certainly give your ad the most attention.

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1. Try referrals. No sales lead is stronger than one gained through word-of-mouth referral. A customer recommending your product to a friend is the absolute best advertising you can hope for. You could encourage this positive behavior by establishing a referral rewards program. Offer free goods and services, or discounts, to customers who get their friends to buy from you.

2. Throw appreciation days. Own a store or restaurant? Do you host senior days? How about student days, or just general customer appreciation days? Events like these not only create loyalty among your returning customers, they also draw in first-time customers off the street and give them a great first impression of your business.

3. Send an email newsletter. Offer a newsletter for free to anyone who signs up, and in it offer discounts, freebies, and other incentives to return to your store. This kind of outreach isn’t about mass-mailing thousands of anonymous individuals, but targeting interested prospects with useful and enticing offers.
   

Take, for example, Diadem Communications. That is the name Susan Friedmann gave to her startup enterprise, a business geared to help clients maximize their trade show presence and sales. In a recent article, Susan pointed out that Diadem means “crown.” She felt starting this business was her “crowning achievement.” Get it? She loved it, but apparently her market did not.

Susan went on to list six key criteria for naming a business, which we agree with wholeheartedly:

• Tells us who you are
• Tells us what you do
• Tells us how you do it
• Differentiates you from your competition
• Piques customers’ interest
• And best of all, invites further investigation

Taking her own advice, Susan renamed her company The Trade Show Coach. Okay, now that is perfect. It instantly tells you what her company does and how (via coaching), and it’s unique enough that I bet there’s nothing like it out there in the marketplace. I’m intrigued, aren’t you?

We went through a similar “whoops” with the predecessor name to StepByStepMarketing.com. Back in the day, as some of you loyal subscribers know, our first attempt at a self-help marketing website was called Fuelnet.com. Now, Fuelnet.com evolved from a print marketing newsletter called Fuel, which we used to send to customers from the professional services side of our business. Sporting the tagline “Unconventional wisdom to power your customer communications,” the publication was designed to provide proactive marketing and sales advice to our best customers and prospects. When we switched to a web-based platform, we renamed it Fuelnet.com — without giving it a whole lot of thought. After all, we were kind of attached to it.

Three years later, and after much analysis, brainstorming, and market research (see, we follow our own advice!), we re-launched as StepByStepMarketing.com. And you know what? That is a really good name. It instantly tells you what we do and what the benefit is to you, our customer. It also tells you we are web-based, and believe me, we did our homework before settling on this name to ensure there was nothing like it in our chosen markets.

So, never be afraid to think about changing your name to better serve your business needs. And better yet, give it the thought it deserves right up front. A great name can help you win big right out of the gate.

P.S. Check out our Web site for lots more tips on brand identity marketing.

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Like any business, Best Buy has good and bad customers — what they call “demons” and “angels.” Aware of this, the retailer went about profiling all of its customers by geographic and behavioral trends. Then each group was condensed into a “persona” — a named series of bullet points that outlined who that customer is, what his or her needs are, and their psychological profile. Also, it classified each as a demon or angel. These stereotypes — which covered 95% of all Best Buy customers — were then taught to every new employee working the floor at the store.

The goals of this endeavor were two-fold. Best Buy first and foremost wanted to know who its best customers are and why they buy, to be able to teach their employees how to best sell to them. The second reason was to identify their worst customers; the unprofitable strict bargain-hunters. Best Buy hoped that understanding these customers would allow them to identify how best to turn them into profitable customers.

This is a prime example of customer profiling done right. Best Buy researched its customers with the goal of finding actionable information. It condensed this vast research into concise yet informative and useful tools that can be used to train employees and guide marketing. The effort spent on research and analysis is repaid when the company knows exactly who to sell to, and how.

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• Embrace risk, ensure reward. Memorable marketing schemes are often imitated or parodied. How many event T-shirts have you seen with the Mastercard “priceless” layout? Bearing that in mind, hold a contest to create a new or updated slogan or motto for your business, and award a prize to the winner. This will not only bring the attention to the most flattering or appropriate image of the brand, it allows people to interact with the product in a vetted, safe environment.

• Keep it amateur. Asking for submissions is a great guerilla marketing tactic, but it’s important to walk the line between marketing and outsourcing. To limit your participants to true fans, don’t offer a cash prize, which will draw professionals. Instead, offer experience related to your company, or product perks. This not only saves you money, it ensures that your content comes from real fans, who will appreciate the recognition and understand the brand far more.

• Don’t create, personalize. If you ran a soda company, you wouldn’t allow consumers to fill your bottles with just anything and sell it. Similarly, you shouldn’t completely relinquish control of your brand. For example, Jones Soda encourages viral engagement with its unique customized labels — selected by consumers with very little risk or cost involved. Allow for creativity in a controlled environment, instead of banking on entirely new creations, in order to get the most from this tactic.
  

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Such a development would present some challenges for businesses that use information gathered online in their customer profiling and behavioral targeting. But it could have the potential to help level the playing field for smaller businesses. The big companies that mine massive amounts of consumer data may have less of a competitive advantage. But a business targeting a specific region or a niche market has more opportunity to establish a rapport and show consumers that they can provide better service by getting to know their customers better.

Here are three tips for gathering customer intelligence without making your visitors nervous about privacy:

1. Utilize social media. Facebook is one online venue where consumers are “opting in” in droves. A profile page for your business — and if appropriate your individual products — is a must. Night clubs, minor league sports teams, and other businesses with a location-based clientele frequently post promotions for their Facebook fans. If you make “sharing” the information with friends a condition for winning, that will help you grow your fan base even faster.

2. Provide a free premium in exchange for information. A standby on company web pages is the form asking customers to share their information. But it takes some motivation to get visitors to take the time. Fortunately, you don’t need to spend a lot of money to provide something of value to online visitors. If you have a retail or foodservice business, try a $10 coupon that customers can printout after completing the form. If you provide a professional service like investment counseling or landscaping, share some of your expertise in a free report — make sure it’s well-designed and offers truly useful knowledge and not just a sales pitch.

3. Steer customers to the web. Encourage your customers to connect with your business online. If you have a brick-and-mortar location, include your web address (and a reminder to connect with you on Facebook) on receipts, bags, and in-store signage. If it’s in your budget, print your web info on gift items that customers can pick up at your register. If you have a wine shop, go with bottle openers or corkscrews. If it’s a bookshop, try bookmarks. And so on.

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1. What business is your brand in? This is your first question when beginning market research within your industry. For example, Olay is in the skincare business, and BMW is in the automobile business. However, both could also be considered a part of the luxury industry. Your answer might change how you approach your marketing. A distributor might find that, upon further exploration, it is in the retail or shipping business.

2. What does your brand deliver, and what promises does it make? M&M’s deliver chocolate candy of a small size and with color variation. The most well-known brand promise is that these candies will melt in your mouth, not in your hand. Make sure any of your promises hold up as well, especially if they can be easily tested by any consumer.

3. What does your brand stand for? In approaching this question, consider the “emotional service” your business provides to the customer. Use as many adjectives as possible to define the marketing campaign and the product itself. Carefree? High-end? Colorful? Timeless? Amusing? Must-have? Use that knowledge when choosing a color scheme, spokesperson, even on-hold music for your phone number. In addition to aligning the marketing materials to the message, it’s also essential that your message is clear and understandable. Find a company philosophy like “Current fashion should be available to everyone,” and stick by it.

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A quick bit of market research would reveal that, indeed, baby boomers spend the most dollars on skin care products, but teens are a close second. Appearance-obsessed and heavily influenced by marketing, teens represent an extremely lucrative market segment for skin care retailers. The growing purchasing power of teens, thanks to ever-increasing allowances, is making them into a viable market segment to focus your efforts on.

The leading skin care and cosmetics companies have begun making products tailored to teenagers’ needs, like affordable versions of hair care products associated with celebrities. For example, J.Lo recently endorsed a new line of skin care products. Marketers have crafted their messages to appeal to teens’ paradoxical desire to fit in with everyone else while simultaneously being unique. Teens are a volatile market, exhibiting almost no brand loyalty and constantly shifting their view of what is “cool.” Staying on top of those trends is the key to success. Companies that do are rewarded with a nearly fanatical consumer base with an ever-increasing purchasing power.

L’Oréal and CoverGirl saw the potential of a market that was being overlooked, and capitalized. Axe saw the exploding trend in teen appearance care and identified another overlooked market segment: male teens. So the question is, are you targeting an overly competitive market? Is there a segment that is being overlooked that you can focus on? If there is, the rewards for pursuing it could be great.

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Companies like Polaris Marketing Research are excellent resources for measuring and reporting on customer satisfaction. But even if you don’t have the money in your budget to utilize such a service, you can do your own customer satisfaction research with some time and a little elbow grease. Here are three ways to gauge customer satisfaction.

1. Price and quality (aka value). Customers want a good value, and if they perceive your product as overpriced or of poor quality, they may well go elsewhere. Work to ensure that both your product quality and price point exceed your customers’ expectations.

2. Customer service and support. Apple is known for stellar customer service and support, and as such their brand name has been elevated in recent years. Compare that to Microsoft, whose long wait times for tech support and frustrating customer service experiences have led to a host of disgruntled PC users. Lesson: customer service is a major piece of overall customer satisfaction.

3. Competitive products and services. As the Apple vs. Microsoft example illustrates, consumers will compare you to your competitors and make a judgment on who to buy from based on the reputation each has made for itself. Satisfying your current customers will affect how prospective customers view you, so please your loyals in order to draw in new customers.

As marketers and business owners, we also seek attention from our target audience. Candidates, however, have the advantage of an end date, so the voter is incented for a brief period of time to pay attention. But there are some valuable lessons to be learned from their last-minute campaign marketing efforts.

Lesson No. 1: Put a sense of urgency into your message. Some examples include: “For a limited time” and “Buy now, pay later.” A deadline forces a decision that might otherwise be put off until later. Always consider whether you can create a need for customers to decide now. Don’t do this with every campaign, just with some of them.

Much end-of the-road campaign money is funneled into a single, big effort. And often, due to financial constraints, a decision is made to focus the entire budget on one medium. Whether that’s television, direct mail, email, or someone on a street corner waving a placard, a single campaign blitz for a short period of time is often a favored method. And, in many cases, it works quite well.

Lesson No. 2: A blitz campaign can gather a lot of attention in a very short period of time. This is a great technique if you have a new product launch or a grand opening. Push all of the launch dollars into one program and beat the drum as hard and as fast you can for your message. It will be memorable, and it may likely be quite effective for a short-term period.

One of the more interesting, and low budget, methods candidates use for last-minute campaigning is having someone stand on a street corner or on an overpass holding a “Vote for Joe Schmoe” sign and waving at each passing car with great enthusiasm. It’s often someone who represents the candidate. A general consumer version of this kind of street marketing is someone standing outside a restaurant dressed as, say, a chicken, waving customers in to try something new on the menu. Yes, these techniques do work.

Lesson No. 3: Taking it to the street can provide immediate benefits and insight. Even better than gaining immediate interest or sales with a sign-waving human, you might actually learn something about how your brand — individual or company — is viewed by others. If you get happy smiles and horn-honking, you can interpret that as a thumbs up. Sour expressions, shaking fists, or prolonged horn blowing could, and should, be interpreted as something is just not quite right and needs a little reworking. People just don’t seem shy about expressing a point of view from the safety of their cars, and there is always something to be learned from that.

So while the barrage of campaign advertising is washing over you (tomorrow, in some locales), think about what you can apply from the messages of last-minute marketing. There’s much that can be learned.

P.S. For more tips on unique marketing tactics, please check out the guerilla marketing tactics section of our website.