Strategy Challenges for Effective Online Marketers, Part 1
Questions to ask when aiming to reach more people and better people, and requesting more resources.
Questions to ask when aiming to reach more people and better people, and requesting more resources.
Marketers like to ask: How do I increase my sales? How do I get more leads? How do I drive more traffic to my site? How do I achieve better search engine rankings? How do I keep customers from abandoning their shopping carts? How do I use the data I get from my analytics software? How do I move to the next level?
These are important questions. Over the last decade we’ve challenged hundreds of clients to reframe their questions. For instance, instead of asking, “How do I increase my sales?” marketers should address, “We need to reach more people.” Jeffrey, my brother and partner, and I put this list together to help you consider those in this two-part column.
There Is a Bigger Question: What Makes People Buy?
Focus on this question and everything else falls into place. Understanding “What makes people buy?” requires more than a simple change in tactics; it requires a significant change in perspective.
Your perspective dictates your strategy.
Without the correct strategy, you can win all the battles and still lose the war.
Without the correct strategy, you can get more leads, drive more traffic, rank high in the search engines and still fail to increase sales.
This isn’t theoretical. We see it happen all the time.
Tactics: The Unspoken Assumptions
When you tackle site optimization, design, or redesign, you begin with a set of assumptions. Usually, your assumptions reflect a granular, detail-oriented view of the problem as the business sees it.
This leads you to imagine the solution lies in the application of “best practices” — a series of tactics. But Sun Tzu explains that tactics, applied without effective strategy, are “the noise before defeat.”
To answer the question “Why do customers buy?” you must approach the problem as the customer sees it. Until you understand the customer’s perspective, you can’t talk tactics. For now, put those tools back in the box.
When you ask, “Why do customers buy?” your view of your situation zooms out. You see the larger picture that will help you systematically connect your tactics.
You must fully understand the answers to the buying question before you can begin choosing the system’s components. We’re not talking about your system for selling. You already understand that system. We’re talking about the customer’s system for buying.
In review:
The critical answers to this new perspective — the answers that meet your specific needs — can only come from you.
Seven Online Marketing Challenges
Sometimes you really do just need answers to the questions marketers ask — just not as often as you’d think. We don’t doubt you put in a lot of time; we do suspect you’re not asking yourself the more complex questions. However, when you do have the challenges below, there are ways to solve them — and frame them as bigger questions.
1. “We need to reach more people.”
That’s a start. Next you must ask yourself the bigger questions:
2. “We need to reach better people.”
That’s a start. Next you must ask yourself the bigger questions:
3. “We need more resources.”
That’s a start. Next you must ask yourself the bigger questions:
Next time we’ll cover the last four of seven strategic challenges that marketers must consider. Are there other challenges that marketers must tackle? Let me know.