Big businesses, within financial services, have big budgets and fairly large resource teams dedicated purely to marketing, developing and implementing the various marketing strategies. We see their marketing messages everyday, on our TV’s, on our way to work, on our mobile devices, everywhere we are, their messages are too. Pretty impressive stuff, isn’t it? But do you know the one thing that can sometimes let them down, that you can benefit from, is their client engagement – the actual people who are given the responsibility of working with their clients.
How many times have you experienced bad customer service? someone on the end of the phone who clearly hasn’t seen or heard their recent advertising message? You call that business because their marketing worked, you have a need, they appear to have the solution and as far as you believe they say they understand you and care about you. How does it make you feel when you respond to their advertising only to have a bad experience? let down, disappointed, perhaps not even surprised?
This is where you have the advantage, if you do it correctly.
Marketing isn’t just about advertising and communications, it’s about processes, systems and client engagement. Its about writing a marketing strategy that ensures that what you say you do and believe in, gets delivered at every touch point of the client experience. And that, is where big businesses struggle. Their not as nimble and flexible as you are. When you develop a marketing strategy, you do it as an entire business, everyone has input, ownership and accountability, ensuring that the experience your marketing communicates is the one that gets delivered, unlike big business.
When you develop a marketing communications campaign make sure everyone knows how to respond to inquires, exactly what to say, who they should speak to – what is expected – write it down as a process.
Make sure you let your clients know that what you promise will be delivered, actually will be delivered – simple statement but if you can live up to it, you’ve built a business worth referring and a business of value.
And please, when someone rings your business, can the person who answers the phone, not say the words “and you are?” when I want to talk to someone – one day I’m sure I’m going to respond by saying “I’m a human being is what I am!”
