Pause and Reboot
By Daniel Ramirez, MPA Media Marketing Intern
Do you feel like you've hit a marketing plateau? It can be a challenge to remain fresh and afloat in today's economically difficult terrain. But those on top aren't wasting any time waiting for a light at the end of the tunnel. Shifting customer demands call for an inevitable adjustment to business services. Just in the past month, McDonalds has tweaked their Happy Meals to include more fruit servings and fewer french fries. Dominos is incorporating online tracking information, giving a step by step log of your pizza. And Wal-Mart will begin streaming movies online, ala Netflix, although with no membership required. All are ways in which business are reinventing their service to their customers and better yet, attract new ones. So, when did these marketers decide to reinvent, and when do you know it's time you should too?
Think back, years ago, at the developing stage of your business and marketing model. You where of a certain age and point in your life with certain aspirations, goals, dreams and the hope for success, all of which, where gambled with the opening doors of your company. More than likely, you aspired to perform at a particular caliber, with top notch services and products, and great revenue numbers. Now stop reflecting and think of where you are at this moment. Take these three areas, to realize where you should make changes today.
Go for a tune-up. A sincere and inconvenient evaluation of your business can get the ball rolling on what needs to change to determine what has left you behind the pack or has kept you from pulling further ahead. A powerful reflection can make you see those red flags. Has there been a decline in customer excitement for your products? If so, bring the buzz back to your business.
Perhaps you have pushed your marketing techniques back far too long, your excitement level dwindled, or you have become content with your current marketing strategy that you can't formulate what more possibilities lie ahead. If your marketing strategies haven't changed in the last few years, you are missing out on great, and sometimes inexpensive, media platforms.
Pay attention to the customer. Addressing the wants and needs of customers provides you with key data on where you stand in meeting these demands. Listening to your customers directly, or assessing consumer behavior and attitudes answers industry concerns.
In the case of McDonalds versus health critics, who shamed McDonald's caloric and fat soaked menu, the restaurateur counter-acted to steer from being consistently tied to its health failures. For McDonalds, a changed menu equals a changed image.
Dominos, who suffered embarrassment after videos of employees mishandling pizzas went viral, took a transparency approach as their campaign and aim at fully integrating customers to the pizza-making journey and the opportunity to leave comments.
Or perhaps, you have neglected an untapped market. Break language, cultural, and economic barriers and reach to those whom you haven't in the past. Lack of exposure to your future clients may be holding you back and is something else you may ask if you have enough of. It is essential to being recognizable in the market which leads to increased sales.
Look for new opportunities. In physics, potential energy is stored energy of an object by means of its position, when action or force is applied, this energy is exerted. This can be applied to business. A business' current standing has potential by use of its internal and external resources. It's time to add to these resources, something new, while always ahead of the competition.
Wal-Mart saw the opportunity, success and convenience of online movie streaming and will start renting movies using their website, without a subscription. By offering reasonable prices, Wal-Mart is rolling with the new demands of at-home entertainment.
Ask yourself if there are more services or products you can provide to clients. Will this require expanding your inventory or further training for yourself and/or staff? If you are not generating excitement and increased sales of your products this may be. And perhaps an update to ads and design can significantly jump-start an image touch-up.
The conundrums suggested are an honest self-evaluation that can aid in reaching the coveted potential. They may help in confronting what can longer be unavoidable. An update can be painstaking and possibly unwelcomed. However, it can rejuvenate what would otherwise remain stale. And can allow one to get back on track and fulfill those goals and dreams you first set out to accomplish.
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