Most organisations exist for the benefit of its customers or clients of some description. To gain maximum effect they need to be marketing themselves.
Marketers have to draw the attention of ‘targets’ to the existence of their organisation and its commodities, all of the time, every day of every year. It is an on-going requirement that never lets up. The basic principles hardly ever change but the up-to-date material, data, information, fashions, etc. change all the time and have to be regularly and continuously revised if you want to be a Winning Marketer with a successful organisation.
In last week’s blog I implied that some special characteristics of your organisation could be used for effective, permanent, marketing advantage. In this blog I will review some of Solar Solve’s special characteristics that we use to market the company.
I class the following organisational achievements as Special Characteristics and consider them to be a Marketer’s Dream.
A business will have gained them through sheer hard work and determination on the part of the employees and they are like gold dust as far as helping to market the enterprise is concerned. Such achievements are not only permanent advantages but many of them will be unique to a particular business, enhancing their benefits even more.
USP’s – Unique Selling Points, can be used time and time again in marketing campaigns, especially any USP’s that cannot be claimed by your competitors.
Customer Commendations – can be very useful if you compile a proper reference document that backs up your claims.
EW3 – Giving customers Exactly What they want, Exactly Where they want it, Exactly When they want it, is standard practice for some types of business and therefore not so unique, but for the majority of them, they just cannot seem to achieve this objective. If yours can, then it is worth telling your prospects about, regularly.
Business Awards – as well as the publicity at the time the award is won, there is the advantage of keeping a tally and using information relating to total number of awards won, from time-to-time, in ongoing campaigns. There are lots of opportunities to win awards including Quality Assurance, Investors In People, Green Awards, Customer Care and Exports, plus many that will be specific to your field of operations.
Marketing, Promotion and Sales all go hand-in-hand with the same objective of prompting someone to buy what you have on offer.
Never underestimate the power of marketing and embrace the fact that it will bring the all-important sales that your organisation needs, to exist. One third of Solar Solve’s employees attend a weekly mini-marketing meeting and the full monthly marketing meeting. Some of them have other responsibilities outside of sales and marketing but 20% of the total man hours every week are spent on this important part of the business.
Just to re-cap: Marketing should not be a strategy used ‘as-and-when’ sales drop off. It has to be properly planned, dedicated, well organised, properly implemented and continuous.
A re-edited article originally written as a Chapter in 40 Ways 2 Win At Marketing published in 2013.
John Lightfoot MBE, Solar Solve Chairman
