- November 8, 2021
- 3 minute read
Most of us think of marketing as a way of increasing desire, a way to encourage customers to rush out and purchase our products and services. This is of course, true, marketing is ‘fuel’. We need an attractive brand, excellent creative ideas, technical skills and accurate data to allow us to fine-tune the delivery of all this lovely fuel.
We obsess about making our businesses as attractive as possible, creating a better offering than our competition, straining every sinew to impress our customers. This is all very good, spot-on, obsessing about your sales and marketing is key to business success.
But, and there is a but, we may have lost a bit of good, old-fashioned know-how in our quest for better ‘fuel’. Yes, fuel is great, but great marketing also needs to carefully consider something else. Any ideas? Quick clue, I got 2nd place in the _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ race at primary school, it’s the greatest school race of them all in my view… yes, the obstacle race.
Great marketing needs to consider all possible ways of removing obstacles for the customer. Removing obstacles to response, to sale, is very powerful. We want to make everything as easy as possible for our customers. Make your offering crystal clear, explain your pricing simply, ensure that responding or buying involves the absolute minimum effort for your customers. We mentioned the importance of simplicity in our recent design psychology blog, so can you extend that simplicity further in your business? How can you ask less of your customers in order to attract more? Food for thought.
I’ll leave you with a lovely example though. A furniture company was wondering why they were getting great interest in their sofas, but few sales. They considered numerous ways to ‘fuel’ a greater desire to get customers over the line. But after some research, they realised that the problem was not a lack of desire, but a genuine obstacle. Their customers already had sofas and did not know how to dispose of them responsibly to make space for the new sofa. Solution… free old sofa collection with new sofa delivery… sales exploded.
Thanks for reading, and in the spirit of success for COP26, remember, we’re all in this together.
