Creating Demand Through Effective Marketing

How do you know what your customers want?  Many times, a business owner and executive team make the mistake of thinking what THEY want is what the consumers want.  But, we’ve all heard the phrase, “consumers drive market”.  So, why do so many ignore that?

Before investing any money in marketing, ask yourself: Do you know what your customers want? Do you think your customers trust your products? Do you have reviews confirming what they think?

The answers are directly related to marketing.  

How you market your business determines if the enterprise will be successful or not. In turn, what people truly think of your product or service determines how you should market. Marketing is a tool used to create and maintain demand, relevance, reputation, competition and more.

1. Marketing Is an Effective Way (if done correctly) of Engaging Customers

It’s important for your business to engage its customers. The right marketing helps to keep the conversation going.

Engaging customers is different from pushing your offers. Engaging involves furnishing your customers with relevant information about your products and your business as well. Tell your customers what they don’t know. Let it be interesting and worth their time.

Social media is one of the best platforms where you can engage your customers. Some organizations use short videos and other humor-laden tricks to engage their customer base. Do NOT use social media to just announce deals, events, new products, etc.  Use it to engage and get a feel for what the audience wants.

Marketing gives your customers a sense of belonging when you engage them.

2. Marketing Helps to Build and Maintain your Company’s Reputation

The growth and life span of your business is positively correlated to your business’s reputation. Your reputation determines your brand equity.

A majority of marketing activities should be geared towards building your brand equity.

A business’ positive reputation is gained when it effectively meets the expectations of its customers. The customers become proud to be associated with your products.  And expert marketers use effective communication, branding, PR and CSR strategies to ensure that a business’s reputation is maintained.

3. Marketing Helps to Build Relationships

Businesses need to build a relationship of trust and understanding with their customers. Marketing research segments should be based on demographics and consumer behavior.

Segmentation helps the business meet or exceed the needs of its customers. This makes the customers brand loyal. Loyal customers will have the confidence to purchase more products and services from you.

4. Marketing Is a Communication Channel Used to Inform Customers

Marketing informs your customers about the products or services you’re offering them. Through marketing, the customers get to know about the value of the products as it pertains to them. It helps create brand awareness and makes the business stand out.

There’s stiff competition in any industry and you need to be a constant voice to convince the customers that you are the one to choose. Through communication, marketing helps your business become a market leader.

5. Marketing Helps to Boosts Sales

Marketing utilizes different ways to promote your products or services and arms the sales team with a consistent, cohesive message and collateral material.

Customer are more apt to become brand ambassadors when they are happy with your sales agents, products and services. They will spread the word and your sales will increase.

Ensure you offer high-quality products and services and a great customer experience to complement your marketing efforts.

6. Marketing Helps Your Business to Maintain Relevance

Every marketer understands the need for disrupting a potential consumer’s opinion about other products. Most businesses assume that they will always remain the client’s favorite brand because they’ve never expressed a complaint. Wrong. You need to find ways to remain at the top of the client’s mind.

Every relationship needs to be maintained. Marketing helps your business to maintain a good relationship with customers by helping you remain relevant.

It’s a lot harder to gain new customers than keeping current ones.  Shift the focus to making current customers happy and they can become your brand ambassadors.

7. Marketing Creates Revenue Options

During the startup phase, your options are sparse since you’re mostly cash-strapped. This means marketers need to be creative and frugal in getting you and keeping you in the forefront of customers’ minds.

As your marketing strategies generate more customers and revenue opportunities, you’ll begin having options.  New options will lead to the ability to penetrate new markets.  What’s more?  You can start weeding out the clients who are too demanding or just ‘don’t get it’.

8. Marketing Helps Management Make Informed Decisions

Every business is confronted with problems such as to what, when, for whom and how much to produce. Businesses should rely on marketing mechanisms to make these decisions.

Why? Because they serve as a reliable link between your business and society. They cultivate people’s mind, educate the public and convince them to buy.

Marketing Can Give You Competitive Advantage

Your competitor is actively marketing their product. So should you. The only way to gain a competitive advantage over your competition is aggressive and strategic marketing.

Don’t be sleazy or negative against your competitor. Simply conduct research on what your target market is expecting, and then find ways to deliver better products, services and customer experience.

Get Your Head IN The Clouds – Tips to Marketing Your Cloud Communications Business

Basic marketing principles can and should be implemented by all businesses in every industry.  However, some fields require extra thought – about industry growth, competition, end users and analytics – and your marketing team should be in the know if they want to effectively and efficiently market your business.  Let’s take cloud computing and software – not a sexy topic, but a booming realm nonetheless. As new cloud applications emerge and the landscape evolves, vendor collaboration will continue to emerge as hybrid solutions unite public and private infrastructures under one management framework.

For marketers, these shifting buying habits means untapped opportunity. Ready or not, there are insights and tactics marketers should take advantage of — and win over — the changing cloud marketplace.

Before diving into strategies for cloud providers to succeed in their marketing efforts, here are a few unique challenges to consider when it comes to your customer’s shifting approaches to Cloud Service Providers.

1. Strengthening decision-maker relationships

It’s extremely difficult to win over the entire buying committee. If your organization does not have existing relationships with primary decision-makers and influencers, breaking outside of the IT room can be difficult.  So, start small…start now.

2. Meeting new security risks and demands

Cloud services have a bad reputation when it comes to security risk. It’s your responsibility to proactively address concerns early and often with prospective clients. Start by sharing exactly what measures your organization is taking to create high-quality, secure cloud network.

3. Storytelling

The cloud technology market is flooded, and it’s tough to cut through those leading the pack to tell your unique story. Hone your pitch into a few pieces of engaging and concise content that is easily consumable. This takes time, money, and bandwidth that many marketers do not always have. The best content is educational — cloud buyers span multiple verticals and levels of expertise and it’s your job to bring them up to speed.

4. Falling behind the curve

Products, services and initiatives are constantly changing in the market, and these shifts are not slowing down. For cloud-based companies that get caught behind the times, the results could be disastrous. Keep educated on the direction the industry is headed in order to stay ahead of the curve.

Stand Out and Stand Above Competition

In order to overcome the aforementioned challenges, you must find ways to stand out in a robust and ever-changing market.

1. Position your company as more than a cloud vendor; position it as a differentiated IT partner

 Consumer CSPs have essentially made cloud computing a household name, but more can be done with cross-model expertise when it comes to public, private, and hybrid solutions. As CSPs become an integral part of IT strategy, companies must make known that they are more than just another vendor. Show how your product will lead to stronger, more successful organizations — and showcase your differentiating factors. Is it data encryption that is compliant with industry regulation? Is it speed and business availability when data recovery must be done quickly? Is it location and storage power? How important is your customer experience and transparency? Offering remote management and accessible support teams will put executives at ease and put you above the rest.

2. Leverage Account Based Marketing (ABM) to target both prospects and customers to upsell and grow your business

Adopting an Account Based Marketing (ABM) strategy is a powerful way to increase your brand’s relevance and drive ROI from your marketing efforts. Find ways to get you in front of the contacts and decision-makers that matter most, enabling you to become a stronger, more visible force within cloud’s competitive landscape.

3. Help customers understand the level of security your cloud service can provide

Many consumers still believe that cloud services do not have the same level of security that the data center does. Your company needs to help customers understand that this is no longer the case. Educate them on the ways that your solution can provide enterprise-grade security that extends beyond the capabilities of the data center.

4. Fill in your customer's storage gaps

Again, position your organization as a strategic IT partner. Your customers may have holes in their offerings around storage, and you can provide the platform for marketing and selling their data management and hosting services. By understanding their unique needs, you can fill the gaps and provide a more holistic service.

Cloud marketers have a huge responsibility, which is only going to increase in complexity as new solutions are introduced to the market and competition continues to roar. Companies need to stay ahead of the curve and continually seek to understand the changing cloud market and find new and innovate ways to reach and educate target audiences.