When I was a young professional, my mentor shared a very simple yet powerful outlook on sales and marketing: People will buy from us if they think we’re worth it.
At the time, I’ll admit, this wasn’t a mind-blowing outlook because it seemed so obvious. Of course, the price of a product or service needs to match the value and benefits a consumer receives. Didn’t everyone know that?
However, as my experience and responsibilities grew over the years, I came to an important realization. My mentor wasn’t sharing an observation or conclusion meant to blow my mind. Rather, it was a starting point meant to provide a framework for strategic decision making. It wasn’t just some fundamental truth to sit back and accept. It was a call to action. By digging into the statement, exploring each key piece individually, and then putting it all back together in a cohesive way, I’d have a structured approach suited to a variety of sales and marketing objectives.
Whether you offer a B2C product or a B2B service, or anything in between, I believe my mentor’s approach is relevant. So, here I’m going to break down how I apply my interpretation.
For me, there are three words that jump out; people, think, and worth.
People will buy from us if they think we’re worth it.
Since virtually all sales and marketing initiatives have these three pieces at the center, I focus on clarifying, refining, and understanding these areas in relation to the overall objectives.
People
Who is the target audience?
It’s no secret that people want and expect personalized experiences. Brand messaging and content are most impactful when they are directly relevant to the individual consumer. So, before getting into things like conversion tactics and action drivers, make sure there is internal clarity and alignment regarding the target audience.
Think
What does the target audience think, feel, and know about your brand?
Regardless of a campaign’s goal, there needs to be a defined starting point. By having initial benchmarks regarding what people think, feel, and know, you can specifically design messaging and content to move the needle. Furthermore, benchmarks are necessary to track and measure the campaign’s impact and effectiveness through comparative analysis.
If the goal is to raise awareness, there needs to be a benchmark of awareness levels as of today; ideally broken out by consumer sub-segments. If the goal is to shape perception, there needs to be a detailed understanding of what the target audience currently thinks and feels. If the goal is to strengthen knowledge regarding your brand’s offerings and value props, there needs to be a benchmark of what they currently know and don’t know.
With this information, you can identify where awareness has room to grow, which messages will shape perception to match your ideal brand identity, and what knowledge is needed to ensure audiences understand who you are and what you do. On the flip side, without it, sales and marketing decisions will be made based on assumptions and best guesses – which may be inaccurate or outdated.
Worth
What matters most to your target audience? What do they want, need, and expect?
Understanding behavioral drivers is the key to successful sales and marketing campaigns. This starts with understanding the person behind the purchase. The more you know about what they want, need, and expect from brands within your category, the better you can develop influential marketing messages and content.
In addition to that, it’s important to identify the target audience’s primary decision drivers. When push comes to shove, which factors have the strongest impact? Which value propositions are most appealing? What makes their preferred brands stand out among competitors? Ultimately, the focus is on clarifying what makes a product or service worthy of their heard-earned dollars.
As you can see, what seems like a fairly obvious statement about consumer purchase decisions becomes a lot more nuanced and complex after digging below the surface. So, with all this in mind – do your customers think you’re worth it? To help you find out, here at MacKenzie we offer a variety of services focused on leveraging customer insights to replace assumptions and best guesses with facts, knowledge and wisdom. To learn more about how we can use our data-driven approach to support your sales and marketing initiatives, give us a shout any time!
