Sales & Profit
Last week we kicked off a 4-part series on sales & marketing:
- Overview of the “sales & marketing system”
- Setting sales & marketing strategy (the 5 W’s) [today’s newsletter]
- Measuring sales ROI (efficiency and efficacy)
- Using data to drive decisions (the “feedback loop”)
It’s likely you already have some “strategy” for marketing your products. Maybe it isn’t well defined or written down, but it’s you’re already doing something as it stands today.
“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.” — Peter Drucker
Below is a simplified 6-step process for crafting your sales & marketing strategy using the 5 W’s (plus an “H”).
1) Who
As in, “who is your ideal customer?” and “who will do the work?”
- External — You can’t be everything to everyone. The more narrowly defined your perfect customer, the better your tactics are going to convert. This spans everything from income, hobbies, interests, geography, industry, etc. Tighter bullseye = lower customer acquisition cost.
- Internal — Every piece of the marketing strategy should be assigned to a name (not a department). This exercise reveals where there are internal resource gaps to execute your plan.
2) What
Clearly define what you are selling.
This should include your menu of offerings (present and future), features and benefits for each offering, pricing, promotional opportunities, etc.
Think of this as a clearly defined product/service catalog, such that every customer knows what you have and what they can expect (it’s pretty hard to sell anything without these).
3) Why
As in, “why should I buy from you?”
Define what’s unique about your product(s), company, process, etc. You’ve probably heard the phrase “unique selling proposition,” and you don’t need to overcomplicate it… it doesn’t need to be ONE thing that ONLY you do; rather, it could be a combination of 3-5 things which, when combined, make your company special.
To state this a bit more harshly: justify why you should exist as a company.
4) When
Cadence for execution. I bucket “when” into 2 categories:
- Automatic — These are recurring items happening every day, week, month, year, etc. The goal is minimal time or attention needed to execute (i.e. autopilot). Here are some examples:
- Social posts to all social media channels every day
- Email newsletter to subscribers every week
- Automatic emails for sign-ups, incomplete checkouts, etc.
- Paid ads on Google, Facebook, other mediums running daily and reviewed weekly
- Calling a handful of customers (past and present) every week
- Affiliate programs or manufacturers reps
- Product catalogs or other mailers sent every quarter or every 6 months
- Experimental — This is the “test” bucket to see if you can find something that works to attract and convert new customers. Ideally, once you have success with an experimental channel, then it can be added to your automatic bucket. Examples here could be: product collaborations, sponsorships, participating at events or shows, hosting webinars, targeted cold email, going to trade shows, billboards, etc.
5) Where
Where = distribution channels.
Choose places where your target customer already hangs out and where your margins survive the cost to participate.
Owned channels like your website and email list give you maximum control and minimum cost. Be careful if you become overly reliant on “rented” channels where you don’t control the customer relationship (like Amazon or a single wholesaler).
6) How
At a tactical level, there are tons of “how’s” that can be performed (upsell, cross-sell, paid advertising, blogging, billboards, cold outreach, email marketing, sponsorships, etc., etc.).
Covering the vast universe of marketing tactics is beyond the scope of this newsletter, but I’ll suggest this: regularly experiment with new marketing tactics, habitually track your results, do more of what’s working.
Pull these pieces onto one page and you have a starting point for your sales & marketing strategy!
If you take the time to give thoughtful answers to each of these areas, you’ll find your marketing efforts to be much more effective. By now, you have most of the qualitative pieces to your strategy… next week, we’ll look at how to measure the effectiveness of that strategy. Stay tuned!