Marketing is your DNA

Real marketing is built into what you do not tacked on at the end.

Marketing done well, is not something you bolt on when everything else has been decided.

Marketing is in the DNA of your business – your product, your staff, your customer.

Marketing is not a department, it is a business process that is focused on your customers experience with your company.

Your customer doesn’t care for your organisational hierarchy that puts marketing in a department.

They simply want a great product, at the right price, with a company that they can engage with – they want an amazing customer experience.

The excellent customer service provided by your staff, is not seen as a marketing function by your customer, it’s simply your company.

The customer, moving from online to instore is not marketing – it’s your customers experience.

Don’t put your customer in your organisational silos, create value for them, and achieve this by enabling your whole business to be customer focused.

Break down the barriers in your business to create a place where everyone takes care of the customer. Then together everyone, yes everyone in the company, can focus on what the customer needs.

Funnily enough, while writing this blog today I received a call from a well known Telco.

The guy on the other end of the phone pretended he cared about my business and customer experience.  But he did not, I could tell from the get-go that he was on a commission to sell me an NBN plan.

He had no interest that my broadband had been slow and often down since the NBN had been put in place.

He did not care that we had been charged in excess of $100 for extra mobile data because the wifi was not working.

He told me he could ‘do me a deal’ on a new modem which I would need, despite the fact that the Telstra rep had sold me a new one at the beginning of the year. He didn’t even attempt to determine if the modem I had was compatible, he just droned on about what he wanted to sell me.

He actually told me that I had to go over to the NBN and that was that.

He didn’t care that I had been a customer of Telstra’s for 25 years, he just wanted to push his product…

Your customers, all customers, me and you (because we are customers too), are making decisions based on feelings not facts, we are often choosing to do business with you, not because of facts, but because of how we feel.

You must make your customer feel connected to your company and brand at every step, every interaction, right down to that call where you have the opportunity to make your loyal customer feel valued and loved, and not just a tally on a sales sheet.

Make everyone responsible for marketing, be there for your customer at every step, providing them with help, information and guidance – after all without your customer – what do you have?

Create meaningful customer experiences.