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build a highly engaged audience? But if
we stay busy copying our competitors’
actions, we’ll never identify the assets
we should be building.
You talk about the hurry we are all in
to convert strangers into customers.
But can you explain why it is critically
important to move them from being
unaware to simply aware of who you
are?
Often we assume that all prospects
are the same. But when we take the
time to think about how people make
purchasing decisions, we discover
there are always certain phases they
go through. The three core phases
are: knowing, liking and trusting. As
marketers it’s important for us to break
our marketing campaigns into those
three core areas. In the perfect world we
will have at least one campaign for each
of these phases.
All marketing begins with the first
phase: knowing. Our sole objective with
our campaigns during this phase is to
get strangers (those who don’t know
we exist, but we believe our product or
What are your feelings about
marketing’s role after the wear and
tear of the past couple of years?
From a marketing perspective, the past
couple of years didn’t change much,
humans are still humans. That being
said, the past couple of years revealed a
lot. As Warren Buffett is fond of saying,
“It’s only when the tide goes out that
you can see who’s been skinny dipping.”
As the landscape of the world rapidly
changed, it revealed which marketers
had been “skinny dipping” if you will.
Finally, what is your advice to
marketers in the current climate?
Stop focusing on the next sale. Instead,
focus on those your product serves.
Get to know them. Understand what
keeps them up at night. Learn what
they expect from your company, your
team, and your products or services.
Work to ensure you are exceeding
their expectations. Create a marketing
campaign that turns customers into
evangelists for your company, and when
this campaign is successful, everything
gets easier.
service would be of value to them) to
know about us. Nothing more. Nothing
less.
The biggest mistake marketers make
during the knowing phase is that they
haven’t taken the time to clearly identify
the strangers they should be targeting.
They run their campaigns to everyone
in their service area hoping the message
hits the right people. This is both highly
inefficient and ineffective.
How do you suggest that we be
intentional about building trust into
our marketing system?
We have to begin by acknowledging that
trust is crucial. Until we acknowledge
the reality that where trust goes money
flows, we can’t possibly give credence
to trust’s role in our marketing. No one
is going to pull out their wallet and
hand you money if they don’t trust that
your product or service is going to be
of more value to them than the money
they are parting with. If you’re struggling
to get results from your marketing,
there’s a good chance your campaigns
haven’t done a good job building trust.
April 2022