How to Define a Kick Ass Marketing Strategy

In a tough economy, or when planning a new product or service, there is nothing more important than fully grokking your ideal prospects and customers.

Here are some top tips to fully understand what drives your prospects to do business with you.

“I do not believe in ‘generic’ persuasion.  In fact, my contention is that truly understanding the targeted prospect/customer is more important than any other element in your marketing success.” — Dan Kennedy

This quote reminds me of something brilliant my friend and top copywriter David Garfinkel once said. He said to write compelling copy (or in this case, strategic marketing), you need to know three critical things:

1. Who is my client (or prospect),
2. What is their problem, and
3. How are they talking about it?

Knowing the first one is crucial. A lot of people do market research only to gauge demand, without ever knowing who their client really is, much less how they perceive, talk about, and seek out solutions for, their problem.

The third question in particular is the kicker!

People looking for your services invariably type in the symptoms to their problem, or the challenge they are facing, instead of the name of your product or service.

To illustrate this, imagine you have a splitting migraine and you need to order a cure online quickly.  So you enter the name of your favorite headache tablet and, bingo, any number of online stores appear all offering the solution to your specific request.

But if you’ve never had a migraine before, you might enter a query like ‘headache’, ‘migraine’ or even ‘headache remedies’.  All of a sudden, you’re presented with a range of alternative cures like ammonia, apple cider vinegar, butterbur, cayenne pepper,  celery seeds, eucalyptus oil, feverfew, ginger, honey, lavender oil, lithium salts, menthol, mustard,  peppermint oil, rosemary oil and white willow bark.  By keying in your symptom instead of the expected solution, you’ve magically discovered a whole range of alternative solutions which you would never have thought of looking for in the first place.

Incidentally, this opens up a really interesting philosophical discussion about ‘we don’t know what we don’t know’, but I’ll leave that till another day…

Using the headache analogy, my guess is that your website is optimized for aspirin (the name of your product or service), instead of a range of symptoms like headache, migraine, pain in the head, cephalalgia, dilation of cerebral arteries, etc.  By focusing your efforts only on one solution, you’re going to miss out on a ton of prospects.

And so the first step in defining or refining any marketing strategy is to thoroughly understand your ideal customer’s “Core Complex”. I learned this concept from the business titan Michael Masterson and here is what it is:

The Core Complex of your ideal customers are the emotions, attitudes and aspirations that influence all of their decisions.

A Core Complex is made up of…

• Beliefs:  What does your audience believe is true for them?  What is their attitude about the result your product or service promises to deliver?
• Feelings:  How do these beliefs make them feel?  Are they confident and brash or are they paranoid and fearful?  How does their current situation and your promise to improve make them feel?
• Desires:  What results do they want?  What does success/peace of mind mean in their eyes?

Most companies expect to come out of their market research with a fully-formed picture of their ideal customer and what they want most. In reality, what is needed is to sift through the research results for clues to your ideal customer’s Core Complex.  The outcome of this research typically uncovers the following:

• Biggest customer and prospect frustrations;
• Problems consistently experienced;
• Biggest competitors (there are often unexpected results here);
• Popular, topical websites & blogs;
• Other topics of interest;
• Words and phrases used and any special lingo;
• Likes and dislikes of an ideal customer;
• Level of sophistication;
• Common enemies;
• Recurring themes;
• Demographics (age, sex, education, occupation, income, marital status, children, etc…);
• Psychographics (hobbies, lifestyle choices, purchase behaviours, media habits, values, etc…);
• New product ideas.

Once the results of the research are known, you will be closer than ever to answering the question, “Who will become our raving fans and how best do we communicate with them?”

And why is this important?

“Most entrepreneurs fall in love with the wrong thing.  They fall in love with their own company, or their product or service instead of falling in love with their clients and prospects.  Your whole business success, your whole passion, your whole connectivity, your whole positioning, the way you’re seen, embraced, respected, will change massively when you conceive your business as interacting and enhancing people’s lives.” — Jay Abraham

This process challenges you not to fall in love with your customer, but to fall in love with what you can do to help them.

How To Find Your Prospects’ Core Complex

The process is not particularly complicated, but can be time consuming.  Essentially you need to conduct focus groups, surveys and customer questionnaires.  You need to trawl through forums, Q&A sites and review sites to see what people are talking about regarding your (and your competitor’s) products and services online.  You’ll amass a vast amount of data, and the trick is to be able to read between the lines and to interpret the key concerns tabled among all the data you collect.

It can be done, but takes many weeks, and often months, particularly when you already have a busy day job.

Or I can do it for you…

Using a secret method I’ve developed and perfected over the past 4 years, as well as making use of proprietary software I’ve had specially developed, I conduct this detailed research for you.  I deliver a meaningful management summary of the results within 4 weeks and provide you with a detailed 6-month action plan for your marketing department to implement.  Part of this action plan is my exact secret methodology, so that you can continue to monitor your own progress after 6 months.  Oh, and I’ll answer any questions you may have by phone or email during those 6 months.

Let’s recap what I can provide for you:

• A detailed review of your current situation, including what looks good and what doesn’t;
• In depth research to uncover your customer’s Core Complex;
• A 6-month action plan with week by week activities for your marketing department to implement (and for you to use to manage the process);
• My proprietary game plan for staying on top of your customers’ Core Complex;
• Unlimited telephonic and email support for 6 months after delivery of the report.

In short, you get to know everything you need to fall in love with what you can do to help your customers and prospects.  This will ensure they become raving fans for life.

The cost of this detailed Marketing Strategy is USD7,700; GBP4,700; AUD7,000, or; ZAR50,000.  One half is payable up-front, and the second half on delivery of the report.  If you’re in any way unhappy with what I deliver, I refund any payments made – no quibbles, no hassle.  I too want raving fans, not disgruntled customers, so I can’t be fairer than this.

Am I Qualified to Deliver a Kick Ass Marketing Strategy?

Having spent 20 years studying the marketing greats (Rosser Reeves, Claude Hopkins, John Caples, David Ogilvy, Seth Godin, Drayton Bird, Jay Abraham, Rich Schefren, Michael Masterson, Dan Kennedy, et al) I have a thorough understanding of what works and what doesn’t in marketing.  In addition, I have a thorough understanding of the online space.  Although I can talk in detail about the technicalities of websites, SEO and PPC campaigns, I also have a healthy understanding of direct response advertising and what makes customers take action.  But, and this is where I’m very different to other Marketing Consultants, I have been involved in business development “in the real world” for the past 14 years selling complex computer systems to banks, telco’s and utilities in the UK and Europe.

I was most recently the Managing Director of an eMarketing company in London. Clients included Lateral Group, Barclays, HSBC, Hutchison 3G, Marks & Spencer Money and Bank of America. Here is what my colleagues said of my input there:

“Michael is an eBusiness professional, with a vast knowledge of electronic marketing, billing and online consumer behavior. Michael brings strategic thinking to every engagement and is always focused on the long term value creation. I have enjoyed working with Michael and wholeheartedly recommend him.” – Michael Wright, CEO, Striata Ltd.

“Michael is a thinker. His opinion and perspectives are well researched, meticulously considered and guaranteed to encourage debate. Michael’s knowledge of social media, online consumer behaviour and Internet trends is extensive. I recommend Michael to any organisation or group that requires knowledge of the above coupled with an outstanding work ethic.” – Alison Treadaway, Managing Director, Africa Region, Striata Ltd.

“Michael is both a strategist and somebody with a thorough understanding of business processes and customer communications, a rare combination. I endorse Michael for two reasons: he always delivers what he promised in time and there is no better advocate for a greener world by getting paper out of this world, in a way consumers prefer.” – Rein Geerdes, Director Business Development, Unisys

Further recommendations can be found online at http://linkedin.com/in/MichaelHaupt.

What to Do Next

For a no obligation initial chat, please contact me.  We’ll schedule a time to talk and you can ask all the questions you need until you’re comfortable engaging with me.  I promise there’ll be no hype and no jargon.  If you’re happy, I’ll send a detailed proposal and list of what I need from you.  Then we’ll agree a start date and we can start rocking and rolling.

Until then, live fully, love openly and make a difference TODAY!

Be blessed,