When you hear the term ‘marketing’, what does it bring to mind? Often, we think of marketing as the add on after launch. It is the activity that takes place once the hard work has been done to bring our product or service into existence. More often than not, we also equate marketing with coercion. The cold call, sleazy salesman or tacky advert that demands our attention, rather than earns it. However, at Archer Creative, we believe these views are flawed.
Marketing isn’t just an add on, but an integral part of how you do business. Your name and logo, your founder, your team, your processes; these are all elements by which a customer experiences your equine business. Marketing is what happens internally and externally; it is written in to what you sell and how you sell it. Whatever your role, you are a powerful part of how you market your equine business.
Let’s no longer think of marketing as B2B or B2C, but P2P – person to person.
Connecting With Customers
No one knows your equine business like you do. You live and breathe your business every day. You built your business, you interact daily with your customers, you know the innate benefits of what you sell. This means you are one of the most important marketing assets available to you. The best marketing starts with the customer in mind and the data you collect should influence how you market, both internally and externally.
When we think of marketing as only an add on, we place an emphasis on the external touchpoints – what our adverts say, how our packaging looks and what key messaging we write – but we must also pay close attention to other areas. How our staff are presented, how we talk on phone calls and even how we sign off on emails can all influence how we make our customers feel.
Marketing is how we create a connection between our business and our customers. It’s not only measured in immediate metrics, like sales, but in how we nurture our customers over time.
Belonging, Not Buying
We all make this mistake at times. When the pressure heightens on our bottomline, we often look to short-term gains, rather than long-term relationships. The word ‘marketing’ has become synonymous with selling. When we run a marketing campaign, in the traditional sense, we expect the phones to start ringing and the products to start moving off the shelves. But, in our haste to make sales targets, we run the risk of losing out in other ways.
Your customers don’t want to be bought, they want to belong. So, the task then becomes not only how you can make a sale, but how you can build a community. The highest earning brands in the world – think of the Apples and the Nikes – have constructed their legacy on a larger purpose, over and above making sales. Whether you personally buy into their community or not, what’s undeniable is they have cultivated a sense of belonging. Their success in sales is a byproduct to their purpose and seamless customer experience.
Conclusion
At Archer Creative, what we strive for is a more authentic approach to how we market our products and services. Too often, marketing is deemed a dirty word when it is, in fact, a central part of business and how we each tell our unique story. We believe that when done right, marketing delivers in tangible ways beyond simply sales.
Looking for some outside support? Don’t wait for success, create it — with the experts in equine marketing, Archer Creative. To learn more about how we can help you exceed your growth goals, call us on 1300 077 126 or visit www.archercreative.net.au.
