CHASE
Intelligently
Bart Peeters
Hunting new customers, intelligently
+32 488 663 284
​
​
Ad hoc or longer assignments. Part-time or fixed employment.
Smart positioning
Lure new customers
Outpace competitors
Hunting potential customers. The last 12 years I have been focussing on methods to lure customers cunningly and outpace competitors. Through 360° strategies, campaigns, digital media, guerrilla tactics, strategic partnerships and tailored events. I studied marketing (BA), Strategic Marketing (MBA Module), Consumer Buying Behaviourism (online) and I'm a certified Digital Marketing Professional and Social Selling Expert. I have developed methods and hands-on training / workshop sessions.
Lessons
Learned
A lot has changed the last 20 years.
​
Many companies still remain conservative in their sales approach. These companies do not exploit fully the possible avenues.
​
Luring customers intelligently can be done with modest budgets. But, it is still hard work because you will have to demonstrate that you understand the needs and problems of yout target audience and than provide them with semi-tailored solutions. You will need to create exclusive moments. You will need to visually story-tell how you solve problems in order to reach and impact a wider audience.
​
Today, we label this 360° marketing meaning we will positively influence the thought process of potential customers with a variety of well planned, sequential interactions.
​
Marketing should also provide the goodies that allow sales to succeed.
Entrepreneurs indicate that being able to reach & covert their target audience is possibly their biggest challenge.
A target market is the specific group of people with similar pains and characteristics.
​
The challenge is to get under the skin of the target people. Understanding their biotope, influencers and decision making processes is vital.
​
Profiling and buyer persona, customer insights, documenting their pain and gains, stimuli and triggers sensitivities .. all this takes a bit more time but the ROI will be swift and lasting!
Only 29% of companies manage to reach their customers.
Relieve pain, provide solutions
Pain points are always the backbone of any sales tactic. But pain points have different priority levels i.e. some are more painful and more important than others.
​
If a potential corporate customer recognizes a pain point, he or she will investigate it. So the most important thing is to help potential customers identify, quantify and clarify that “thing” that is getting in the way of achieving something important.
​
Customers want solutions to their problems. They don't always know exactly what they need. This is the opportunity to show a clear step-by-step solution.
​
Human behavior is driven by two powerful mental forces:
-
Pain: The emotional need to avoid discomfort and difficulties
-
Desire & Pleasure: the emotional craving for what we want to experience.
Gains are the hidden ambitions people have, their goals in life, things that give them recognition, that make them happy and successful.
​
We are always looking for pleasure. Desires are usually much broader and are linked to emotions and perception. The psychological reasons that drive decisions such as a purchase need to be understood. You cannot create a desire. It exists in the mind of your potential customer.
​
Gains is not so much about the features and benefits of a product or service, but about creating a better image, a lifestyle, a unique experience. Desire marketing is all about perception and image. Emotional marketing usually focuses on a single emotion such as happiness, sadness, anger or fear to elicit a consumer response.
Consumer knowledge gives you the advantage
Digital Marketing & Social Selling
Marketing for non-food products or services is all about connecting with your audience at the right place and time and with the right, relevant trigger. 80% of the customer journey starts online. But the impact of digital marketing is eroding.
​
Digital ads are seldom a good investment if you don’t understand your audience thoroughly. You will have to enter their territory. You will have to gain respect. You will have their solve a problem or bring value.
​
Digital marketing rarely has a fast ROI. They claim digital marketing is cheap. When it is measured on clicks; yes. But not on conversion rates. The main strength of digital marketing is to have visibility, reach a wide audience, and attract interested people all on a modest budget. Luring potential customers is not enough. It is only the first 2 stages in the sales funnel (the awareness and interest stage). Content management will support the influx of queries and can give you a lot of visibility. Testimonials, short story-telling video’s, incentives & triggers, invitations for demo’s, webinars, blogs, F2F, personal conf calls, events will positively influence the decision process in order to have your client to decide.
​
Digital marketing is powerful in the early stages of sales. It can bring marketing and sales costs down. Digital marketing allows you to measure the impact of your campaigns. But it is only part of a 360° marketing strategy that focusses on conversion. In the end, that is what counts, not?
​
I am a certified Digital Marketing Professional & Social Selling Expert (DMI institute 2019-2021) and I learned from leading international experts.
Marketing efforts should intertwine with several data sources.
Data driven marketing is a process to gain insights and identify trends about consumers and how they behave — what interest them and what they end up buying. But sales and marketing statistics, margins, accurate pricing, and costs, .. are also important factors in order to improve campaigns. Data analysis on operational processes can help to improve e.g. procedures and reduce time to get to market.
​
Today's customer experience has changed exponentially with the availability digital tools such as google & FB analytics. Analysis on digital campaigns are very useful. But association with customer interest and sales revenue figures will provide a broader picture of the campaign impact.
​
Don’t expect great results with one-off campaigns. Customer buying behaviour needs different angles of communication and touchpoints. It’s a growing process. Controlled. From interest through the actual ‘yes’. It is a process of getting better at things. That’s where the data is critical. FYI, research has shown that ROI on digital campaigns take as much of 8 months.
Data intelligence, getting better in campaigns
Influence the decision making processes
A Facebook study indicated that almost 80% of the sales people only have one contact inside the customer's company. These are often contacts that are directly related to the services or products you deliver. And most marketing material is directed to them.
​
However, there are many different people involved for decisions with a certain pricetag. The criteria and personal drivers for making decisions is completely different for e.g. a finance manager than for an operations or IT manager.
​
Different communications should reach the main influencers and decision makers. These communications can be recycled over and over again.
​
This is an area where marketing and sales should closely work together. It is often overlooked and I am convinced that opportunities such as up-sell and cross-sell are missed.
​
​
It has become very crowded out there. Everybody is shouting for attention.
​
To make a difference, you have to create moments that matter in the customer experience trajectory. Mapping tthe customer touchpoints is key and making every touchpoint a positive experience is gold.
​
Digital marketing was hailed as the most efficient manner to reach customer effectively. The effectiveness of content and digital campaigns has dropped significatly because of the daily overdose of messages. But a Forrester study shows that +80% of the time the customer decision process starts on-line.
​
So, what does work well to attract corporate clients?
​
Research show that (potential) customers desire a personal touch, a listening ear to their challenges. But an individual approach is often economically not feasible. Webinars, recorded testimonials, small demo events, record expert panel debates, on-line presentations on how you solved problems, invitations to inspirational events and .. small network events can be the solution. It is a little more expensive but .. often more effective.
Creating exclusive moments remains key
A structured approach is your winning ticket
Over the years I combined my marketing, sales, networking and PR experiences with my marketing, digital marketing, social selling and consumer behaviourism studies.
​
I know what works and what does not. I have written a handbook and designed templates with many useful exercises in order to focus and hunt intelligently.
​
Being well prepared does not take that much extra work. But it is critical to success.
​
Conversion is a multiple step approach. Often, it does take time to see the results in sales figures. The idea is to have sufficient potential customers in the various stages of the sales funnel and to guide them ingeniously towards the conversion status.
​
I fully exploit the digital marketing opportunities (I studied also Digital Marketing & Social Selling - DMI institute) but I complement these with other traditional and face-to-face opportunities.
​
Marketing and sales is hard work and often underestimated. But you have a higher success rate if you hunt thought-through and cunningly. That's the game I know well and I enjoy. Call me know and let's talk.