Partner Article

Winning profitable and sustainable business

The current economic circumstances reinforce the need for all of us all to ensure we’re best placed to both win new and retain existing customers. Whether you’re in the B2B (business to business) or B2C (business to consumer) environment, this might seem harder and harder to do right now.

Reducing prices might seem the easiest way to achieve this - discount deals are prevalent, with brands like Groupon and others offering a seemingly endless array of amazing deals. Whist this can certainly can be a useful strategy - the danger is that consumers come to expect this and may not be prepared to pay realistic rates.

So how do we win business that is profitable - and sustainable?

No surprise that I believe that marketing and sales are the fuel that will drive your business engine. Now more than ever, having a relevant brand proposition is absolutely essential. It ensures that you are effectively differentiating yourself from your competitors and means that your product or service has real value and is not simply a commodity to be purchased anywhere at the cheapest price. Also, presenting it effectively to your customers is vital, so that they don’t just know about it, but understand it.

Finally, its about which channels to use…social media or email marketing, paid search or PR, sales presentations or incentivized promotions… Your marketing agency should help you to tease out your customer-relevant differentiators and find the very best way to communicate them. And with the evidence available through digital media you can have detailed (and often real-time) evidence to measure impact, so its no-longer a case of “50% of my advertising works…I just don’t know which 50%” – you will know exactly what’s working and what’s driving sales. Messages can be refined, timing of distributions adjusted and promotions tweaked to offer the very best possible ROI.

This kind of evidence is exactly what businesses need to enable them to remain ahead of the competition – winning and retaining profitable customers in this highly competitive environment. At r//evolution its what we do. We call it r//esults marketing.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Sara Fisher .