In those halcyon days, family and friends gathered around the TV. A good creative concept would stop people going to the loo or putting on a cuppa. A great concept would get them talking or joking about the ad until the program came back on. Today, there are too many choices and customers are too scattered and busy to pay attention to interruptions.
The same is true of B2B sales and traditional repping. Here are some thoughts on starting your creative process:
What does everyone else do? Are you the leader in your category? If not, maybe it's time to try some asymmetric warfare? Attack swiftly and hard in a focussed area, be highly manoeuvrable, set small achievable objectives, use the enemy's marketing against them.
Define your personality, then go extreme. Whether it is a product or a person, identify the traits you want customers to believe. How do you prove that? Say your thing is customer service, maybe allow for the cost of great customer service to be part of your marketing budget.
Really understand your customer. Beneath every sale is a fundamental truth. The real reason they buy things. That reason is rarely related to feature or benefit. By solving this deep need, you can build a strong differentiation from competitors.
Confidence. Being creative is by definition taking risk. You are trying something new and must be prepared to fail. Self belief is essential, as is the ability to learn from mistakes.
If you want to win more business, then you can do what you're doing harder, or change your process. Getting creative is the best way to move from interrupting customers, to being invited in as a problem-solving partner.
Andrew Wylie, Director of Pandemonium Creative, strategic thinkers in marketing, sales and creative.
No comments:
Post a Comment