Are you building future demand?
“Knowing when, where and how to focus your marketing is key to business success.”
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Are you building future demand?
I just finished reading a really great book on marketing – Future Demand by James Hurman. It’s a short book with punchy content that’s so good that I just have to share some of the key points with you! Forgive me if you already know this, but I think it’s worth a reminder …
People make decisions based on emotions – which is why people keep voting for the party they love and trust rather than the party with the most logical action plans and outcomes.
Emotionally connected shoppers spend much more. When people love a brand and feel connected to it they automatically trust the products it sells – take Apple as an example. Die-hard Apple lovers will buy products at premium high prices even when alternatives are available and significantly cheaper.
Brand focus changes as the business grows – in a startup we need to spend our time explaining what we are selling. As the product or business matures and competitors start to squeeze out the competitive edge our marketing focus changes how we are different (and better), and lastly, as the business reaches maturity the focus shifts to the WHY we exist, building a connection to the core emotions and personality of your brand. This is why well-established brands such as Absa, Nando’s and OUTsurance keep building future customer connections through advertising, sponsorship and the like.
Historically many startups fail because they focus all their effort on selling to today’s customer and fail to build a future sales pipeline by befriending tomorrow’s customer, so when the first flush of success is over, their growth runway ends.
In contrast, those who focus on both servicing today’s customers and building a ‘know like and trust relationship’ with future customers are able to build a strong, resilient brand and survive into the long term.
What this means in practice is that our marketing strategy requires two angles:
- Performance marketing – attracting sales today. This requires Pinpoint targeting of people that are ready to buy now, using rational content such as product information, features, benefits and pricing, along with a clear call to action.
- Brand Building – building future demand. This requires a Consistent, repeated, and recognisable message that develops a feel good and memorable connection between your future clients, you and your brand.
Understanding the difference between these two components and placing the right amount of resources into them, at the right time is key to business success.
That’s it for the week – I can’t wait to get stuck into reviewing the marketing and brand building strategies of the businesses in our accelerators and polishing our own brand building messaging. The future is exciting….and my great delight is that we are helping you build it!
