Solutions to help: Protect your brand

Ensure you are professionally represented

Every time someone representing your company communicates with a prospect your reputation is on the line, especially in these days of ubiquitous social media.

Think for a moment from the perspective of a prospect. If they are important enough for you to communicate with them, if they are a decision maker, a recommender or an influencer then they are almost certainly being contacted by many other people; not just your direct competitors but anyone else that wants to sell them something.

If you don’t already have a relationship with them, from their perspective you are just one in a long line of people trying to sell them something. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t contact them, but it does mean that the contact has to be professional, offer something of value and respect the prospect’s time and viewpoint.

So it’s critical that anyone who represents you can see the prospect’s perspective, gently overcome their initial reticence and gradually develop a trusted relationship by offering valuable information and relevant advice, by understanding their business issues, by being politely persistent and by following through.

The Database Dept.’s ARM Business Platform achieves just that. It’s the science of building relationships with decision makers that are not yet ready to buy so when they are, they trust you.

Deliver a consistent story across all marketing channels

There are more marketing channels than ever today. How do you ensure that you are telling a consistent story across all marketing channels to an individual prospect? And what does it do to your brand if you don’t?

All communication is perceived at an individual level. In other words, every prospect reads, sees, hears or listens to each communication and judges it against his or her own experience.

If a prospect receives different, often contradictory, messages via different channels, if information they share isn’t passed on, if they receive marketing collateral that doesn’t apply to them, if they perceive that they aren’t being taken notice of or that their time is being wasted, then it reflects badly on your brand.

The Database Dept.’s cloud based WebONE Integrated Marketing Database  ensures our Clients know who has said what to whom, when, and how. It captures all customer communications via all marketing channels so you can provide prospects with a consistent, coherent, progressing and relevant narrative.

As well as helping you sell more this enhances your reputation in the market and protects your brand.

Positively influence future customers

Sometimes it’s easy to focus on short term results and forget about the longer term. This can be particularly so when running lead generation campaigns.

For example, if you run a lead generation campaign and get a 5% response that’s seen as a pretty good result. And taken in isolation it is. But what if you run another campaign, perhaps for a different product or service? Then another.

What impression does this leave with the 90% to 95% of people who didn’t respond? If they are in your target market then you want to leave a good impression with those people who aren’t yet ready to buy, don’t you? But from their perspective you keep bothering them with stuff they don’t care about.

If a prospect who isn’t yet ready to engage, but who may be in six or twelve months, or even two years, is hit with multiple disjointed short term campaigns it can leave a bad impression. Particularly if the campaigns are focused on qualifying if they have a budget, a timeframe and an immediate need rather than communicating value.

Obviously you need to know those things – but if they become the main focus prospects soon start to believe you’re much more interested in making sales than in helping them solve their business problems – and this is no longer acceptable. Buyers are demanding that you provide value every time you contact them, that you understand their business and that you explain how can help them.

You need short term opportunities but also need to positively influence the people who aren’t yet ready to buy. If you nurture them, educate them, provide them valuable information and build a trusted relationship with them, when they are ready to buy they will be predisposed to choose you. This helps you to build a stronger, more visible pipeline, to sell more and it also helps improve your reputation and protect your brand.

That’s how we help our Clients to sell more with fewer resources and to protect their brand while we’re doing so.