Windshields and arrows

My perspective recently has been from the driver’s seat of an automobile. That is good in that I get to engage clients AND I get time to think about a variety of things I wouldn't if I was in my office. For instance:

How do you view your customers?

How do they view you?

Those are critical questions that I am not sure many business owners or marketers consider enough – because of time or other reasons. And yet, it is the answers to those questions that are so often sought after when we are looking for ways to increase sales or develop marketing messages to reach our customers.

Spend some time thinking about these two questions. You might be glad you did.

Another idea that has been rattling around my head is this. Often I hear marketers say to one another that ‘you should not use yourself as an example’ for how marketing messages are perceived/received.  While I understand what they are saying and what they mean, I have come to the conclusion that we SHOULD consider ourselves as examples…but we should also consider various other personality types…and how they receive and perceive messages.

Where I tend to hear this line of reasoning is when someone doesn’t like a certain medium or tactic, they will say, “I never look at (billboards, print ads, direct mail…you pick) and I know that our customers don’t either.”

While that might be true and one should always review if tactics are beneficial, it is also worth noting that customers consume information in a wide variety of ways. If everyone was the same that would be too easy and what fun would that be?!

I subscribe to the quiver of arrows approach to marketing. We have all these arrows in our arsenal, and we need to carefully select which ones we need to use for different reasons. But, relying on only one arrow, or too few to do the job, will lead to poor results.

Is this basic marketing? Yep. Do I see this mistake (or similar) made all the time? Yep. There is a reason they are called fundamentals. Often, those that handle the fundamentals best win. Good luck and have fun this week!