Is Your Company Effective with Their Marketing Efforts? Here’s why Knowledge is Power.

If you’re of a certain age, even if you don’t want to admit it, the words “Knowledge Is Power” bring back memories of a favorite Saturday morning cartoon called Schoolhouse Rock.

Schoolhouse Rock had fun, catchy jingles designed to help kids learn the basic laws of grammar, math, government, and history.  I loved that series so much that my kids have it on DVD…and they love it too!

I digress.

The opening song shout near the end contains the three words “Knowledge is Power!”.  Knowledge IS power – in basic, educational settings.  “Knowledge is power” is also true when it comes to marketing to your customer base.

So how can we apply core knowledge to give power to our message and strategy to our marketing efforts?  There are three beginning questions to consider when creating your marketing strategy.

  1. Are You Targeting the Right People in the Right Way?

Everyone battles for market share and product positioning.  In this case, KNOWLEDGE is power—it equips you for battle.

In any battle, it is important to have a strategy for success, which includes knowing who your target is.  Deciding to whom you market requires a lot of thought, research, and ultimately, a defined strategy to go after your target.

Understanding who your market actually is and how to go about reaching them is the first step in developing knowledge.  Evaluate your current market and the success your team is having, and ask yourself the following questions:

  • Is your reach penetrating the right qualified leads?
  • Is your marketing turning new qualified leads into prospects?
  • Is your defined marketing message effectively telling your story?

Without defined strategy, you will try to do battle without knowing with whom you hope to do business.

  1. Are You Effectively Communicating Why Prospects Should Pick You Over All Their Other Choices?

Knowing why your customers choose you empowers your marketing tactics, and arms your sales team with what you need to truly differentiate yourself as a company.  In this case, knowledge is POWER.

Any company—most—will say they have superior products, excellent service, high quality, phenomenal support, etc.  If you stack yourself against your three biggest competitors, all of you probably say that you offer these things (which are critical, by the way, in doing good business).  However, they don’t answer the question:

What sets you apart from the rest?  Is it a specific thing you do?  Is it a tool or an approach or a philosophy that your competitors don’t embrace? Or understand?

How do you know?  How do you use that knowledge to your advantage in the market?  Equipping yourself with this knowledge is critical to your marketing success.  The more knowledge you have, the more strategic your marketing efforts will be.

  1. Are You Leveraging the Knowledge You’re Gaining about Your Marketplace to Improve Marketing Efforts?

Take the knowledge you have to the next level.  Your marketing strategy and approach should be based on critical knowledge of what your customers need, and how you can solve their problems.  Knowledge IS power.  The more knowledge you have, the more power you will own to take your product or service offering to market.

Using marketing tactics like social media, email, direct mail, etc without a plan to strategically reach your target market will make it challenging to tell your story well.

Think for a moment about the Schoolhouse Rock program.  Everything, when used in proper order and sequence, equips you to do your best and be your best, because you can take your knowledge and use it powerfully to your advantage.  It becomes live and fluid, vs. dead and solid.

When deploying marketing strategy, the same rules apply.  Take your knowledge—knowledge of your unique offering—knowledge of your market, and create a well-defined strategy that gets you in front of your customers and enables them to choose your company over all the other choices in the market.

Because for your prospects too…

Knowledge is power.

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