Why yes, I do know a lot of “hacks”. Cool tricks that can raise a conversion rate almost immediately, or double your qualified leads.
But, the thing about ‘hacks’ – is that unless they follow and serve your long term strategy – they will just suck your (limited) attention in lots of directions – and actually slow you down. No matter how “cool” they are – they are TACTICAL tools – there are thousands available – but they must be enslaved to follow your strategy.
An example perhaps?
Let’s use marketing, but it could be any area of your business. Imagine that you are feeling crushed by competitors, that you are increasingly forced to reduce your prices to match the lower prices (in Tenders or Quotes, say) of your competitors.
You are finding that big national players have entered your market, and are “buying” the deals with low up front pricing. At the same time, there are increasing numbers of “one man bands” just opening up and having a go – again at low pricing. What can you do?
Most businesses find themselves sucked into the downward spiral of matching the lowered prices – and convince themselves there is a way to make up the lowered margins with “increased volume”. Trouble is, 99 times out of 100, this does not work.
And you spiral into cost cutting which then reduces your ability to provide your previous good quality, good back-up support and look after your customers. Your existing marketing is likely reduced – as you are trying to cut and cut and cut. Some of your best team members will leave – as you cannot afford to give them reasonable rewards. And you try to reduce the amount you pay their replacements, if you can get anyone.
Perhaps in a desperate fever, you throw some money into attempts to escape the down spiral. You pull money from your mortgage to fund a new website – because if you could just get more leads – that might save you. And “upgrade your website” is one of the things that is listed in all the marketing books and websites as a good thing to do. Let’s follow what normally happens?
You ask around, you look at websites you think are good. And you choose a web designer. Chances are that your web designer is a graphic artist who learned to make websites. Or outsources them to a team in the Philippines. That is fine – but the next step is where you lack of clear strategy bites you, hard.
Your keen new designer asks – what is your marketing message? Who are your ideal target customers? What is the advantage you have created or found in your business that is the structure for your value to a prospect? What marketing collateral (eg documents/videos/white papers/flyers) do you have that positions you where you want to be, and educates your prospects on the important differences you offer to them? Do you have a defined leads funnel (a lead visits your website and is interested – what happens then?)
In reality, your web designer will NOT ask you these questions. They will ask – what do you want? You will say “a better website, that looks great.” You will end up with a “pretty” website – that looks amazingly like all the other websites in your market. It will be so close, that you could just swap YOUR logo and business name at the top for your competitors – and everything else on the pages would remain the same.
And because you have not educated yourself – you will think TICK. Website done.
TACTIC. Changing the look of your website is a tactic. A strategy is when you have a series of tactics that are specifically chosen, coordinated, flavoured and scheduled to act together to produce the bigger (strategic) outcome. Here is an example.
You build an avatar (a very clear description of your ideal target prospect), a tactic. You build TWO landing pages on your website (single webpages with messages suited EXACTLY to attract and be important to your defined Avatar). Each landing page is different to the other – perhaps has a slightly different offer. (Because you use a tactic called “Split testing” which guarantees you a higher conversion rate over time). All are tactics.
Because you have an Avatar – you can create a campaign in either or both Adwords or FB (or other places) – that is precisely designed to be of interest to your avatar. And because of this – your ads are NOT general “mush” trying to attract everyone. (Good copywriting is a tactic). You use your avatar to help select the search terms that cause your ad to be shown, or to choose the exact audience in FB. If you are organized (you are not), you “split test” the ads you run on Google or FB, which means that the ads “compete” and winner remains in use.
If your industry is business to consumer – you know that less than 3% of visitors to your website are READY to buy. The other 97% are NOT READY YET, and about 30% of them are NON-BUYERS. Tactically – all your competition are aimed at the 3% – to get them to call now, or make appointments, or even just BUY NOW. YOUR tactic is to bring some of that 67% of not ready for a quote buyers into your funnel.
But your STRATEGY recognizes that your best customers buy repeatedly, and your target is to get them into your “herd” where they both keep buying and also bring in their friends.
So you use the tactic of estimating the lifetime value of your avatars, and then determining how much money you are willing to invest to BUY them as customers or clients. This is called “Allowable Acquisition Cost”. You have also reviewed all the operations of your business so that you deliver an experience that is AT LEAST good enough for your lead to want to use you again. Perhaps you plot the experience they receive (using process maps) – and add an upgrade to each step. (You give a gift at the time of purchase – something useful that is hard to throw away.). You add in a quality check phone call the day after to ensure everything is in order (and IMMEDIATELY fix anything not at Disney World level). At this time you find this is a great place to get testimonials if you do it in person – you use your phone for a quick video – tactic). After 6 months – you have a service check-in. You might send a birthday gift or card or cake at the anniversary point. You have a friendly and interesting “newsletter” created that goes out bi-monthly. Part of this review causes you to create a relevant and valuable “tripwire” or free offer on your website that brings leads into your email “drip campaign” that maintains contact and gently educates SOME of the 97% not ready yet.
Every thing you do is now designed to get repeated business and referrals. That is a strategy – and all the steps are tactics to bring this together.
If your business is business to business – you create the strategy that helps you get to a similar place. The tactics will be different (for every business). If you have the business we began this post with – getting crushed by price-driven competition – then your only real answer is to develop a strategy that can save your business.
You MUST choose to do this, or you will be shotgunning tactics in an ever-exhausting way. If you have downloaded my Strategy Cheatsheet – you will have a starting place. If you know the Strategic Weapon on Genghis Khan – you are ready to go.
Business is no longer in the place where you can just do what everyone else does, and make it big. If you are “competing” – by just trying to the same as everyone else, but better – you are in for a very hard slog.
The alternative (to competing) is “creating”. This is the nature of business in this century. You can do it with tactics, but to be masterful you need the knowledge to go from BIG picture to DETAIL and back again, repeatedly. Standing still is not an option. Hiding from progress and change is a poor option.
What would Genghis Khan do? (Play to win..)
Cheers
James
Ps – if you are a champion bowler (cricket) and your collar bone is broken – then making adjustments to how you hold the ball at delivery (tactic) is not going to help much. In the same way – if the quality of your product or service has dropped (broken bone), then spending big on TV is perhaps not the best response. You cannot usually outmarket poor service or products. The internet now means that “hiding” any holes in the experience you deliver is impossible.