By Mark Hinder, Responsible for Business Development Programmes, Ricoh Graphic Communications, Ricoh Europe
How well do you know your audience?
Identifying audience makeup can help operations understand their client base and help them grow by offering clients what they really want. It can build trust, credibility, and loyalty.
So says Audience, the second book in the Guide to Modern Marketing series published by Ricoh Europe. It shares insights on what drives a purchase including how unconscious decisions have the biggest influence on choices and how what buyers say and do can be totally different.
It confirms that an Audience First approach should be the very first marketing step. It recommends taking the pain of choice out of the journey by identifying what’s truly relevant to the prospect. By getting into the client’s head, the basic needs process can be defined, both rationally and emotionally. By understanding what’s important, criteria and values can be aligned.
Clients are drawn to suppliers that make them feel good about their purchase and will often buy into a progressive brand. They look for authenticity, business leaders and thought leadership companies. People are ‘happy’ to pay a premium for a product that doesn’t just fulfil its ‘purpose’ brilliantly, but also rewards through brand ‘personality’.
Today’s clients don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. They want to know the why behind your business proposition. Think inside out. Tell them why you exist, then tell them what you do and how you do it. A brand with a strong sense of why creates an emotional response and emotional decisions take less time and effort than rational ones.
Staying close to clients is easier than ever. In the digital world you can see what they’re looking at on your website, where they come from and where they go, and you can hear what they’re saying about you and your competitors. You can understand how they feel, what they think and how they respond. Staying in touch and on top of your audience is mostly just a click away.
The more you know about your clients, the more relevant your marketing will be, which is why analysing existing data records will show market and spend trends. Using data to plot when your clients last bought, how much they spent, and how frequently they’re spending, will provide a clear trend analysis.
Everyone can talk directly to each other in today’s world. Establishing a one-to-one relationship creates interest, gains favourability, and secures trust. The most powerful form of marketing communication is direct marketing. It targets the audience first, is measurable and accountable and outperforms mass media.
Highly relevant and targeted marketing communication is built on good data. And data driven communication is being demanded by the audience itself. Clients are looking to have their preferences recognised and to have their capacity to receive only relevant marketing communication understood. They want what they want, when they want it which us why it is so important to capture individual preferences, deliver individual experiences and identify individual expectations.
The book explores why you should know who your clients are, what they really buy, why they choose a supplier, when you should get to know your clients better and how to talk to them. This should help you confirm and deliver your brand promise and consistently deliver so clients stay with you.
Other books in the series, titled Brand, Vision, Engage and Optimise, will be explored in future blogs. Together they provide a practical, structured, and enjoyable route to business growth and profitability.
They support the completion of a tailored marketing plan with the Ricoh Modern Marketing Canvas. The canvas comprises of four sections – Your Business, Your Marketing, Your Customers and Budget, and is a core part of Ricoh’s EDGE business development consultancy service. With the learning from the six books each section of the canvas can be completed to provide a full picture of business marketing attributes, marketing structure and marketing audience.
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