Remember the problem in this element of the Circuit Questionnaire is your customer’s problem. I invite you to ask: what does your customer’s problem cost? In this post I use my business as a worked example.
What problem does my customer face?
They are organisations and businesses who have found they need to do more and better marketing. They are good at what they do but fail to find new customers, members or supporters. The nature of their problem is their need to move from working in their business, ie doing what they enjoy, to working on their business, ie focusing on what they need to do to generate support.
The short-term costs are failure of business. This can happen very quickly, where the business owner does not have enough resources while building their business. The big issue for any business is cash flow. Note this is not the same as annual profit. Cash flow is money in hand at any time. If finance is not available, a business can fail even if its books over a 12-month period balance.
Many smaller businesses fail the cash flow test because they neglect marketing. A few customers who pay up-front can consume a lot time, reducing the time available to market the business for the next tranche of clients.
Long-Term Costs for Community Organisations
I’ve based this list on one I wrote some months ago. It shows how community organisations with secure income and outgoings can be poor at marketing. No marketing strategy can work if it can’t find and address these problems.
- Organisation does not meet its full potential. If it does not get its message across, it is unlikely to receive the support it needs
- Baroque organisational structures prevent effective decision-making. This is common in community organisations, where a lot of energy goes into democratic structures that are barriers to decision-making. This may be a balance difficult to maintain but if it is not right, it becomes harder for the organisation to get its message across.
- Spending money on solutions that reinforce the problem, eg wrong type of website designer. The more problems an organisation has in its decision-making, the more likely it is to make poor decisions.
- Poor relationships cause increased stress. The more unnecessary bureaucracy, the more likely members feel frustrated and frustration erodes relationships.
- Individuals become isolated as they become more difficult to work with. With entrenched bureaucracy, people retreat into their own silos and so become less accountable.
- External relationships can become restricted. Especially where no-one feels able to speak for the organisation.
- Duplication of effort inside and outside. Poor communication can lead to several organisations attempting the same project.
- People feel unable to act on their own initiative. The organisation develops a permission culture,
Remember marketing is essentially educational and for many organisations failure to engage with their markets, failure to educate their markets, means they lose direction themselves. Marketing reminds organisations why they do what they do. It is expresses their belief in their own purpose. An organisation that does not market is not communicating externally or internally.
Hidden Costs
Sometimes symptoms of stress are more subtle. johnthan / Pixabay
Not all costs are financial. An organisation that is not marketing is likely to encounter other difficulties.
- Stress can be positive where it enables people to generate the energy they need to make their case in the marketplace. But where vision is eroded, money is running short and their message is lost, stress becomes a problem. Stress is not always easy to recognise. There are occasionally physical symptoms, such as shaking, but more often it manifests as mistakes, poor judgement, fits of temper, etc. In time extreme stress can result in physical health problems such as high blood pressure.
- Poor diet and lack of exercise. These can happen where a business owner is under stress and not paying attention to their own health.
- Challenged relationships with families and friends, where someone stressed manifests bad temper or neglect.
- A business that does not market is likely to miss opportunities to network and build partnerships as well as miss out on customers. It is not possible to measure how much business is actually missed through poor marketing.
Conclusion
This shows the costs of the problem my business addresses. Not all organisations with poor marketing encounter all these issues. These problems can be addressed if the business focuses on marketing. Usually a focus on market draws attention away from internal conflict.
I chose community organisations because too much bureaucracy can be a real issue for them. Businesses can find themselves in similar difficulties. Granted businesses are often much clearer in terms of governance but a permission culture is always a possibility.
I can say in my marketing “if you are having these problems, the chances are your marketing needs attention”. I can go on to argue that if you are new to marketing, you need my services to get orientated, understand the basics and plan a coherent marketing strategy. Sometimes you need to resolve internal conflict by looking outwards!
What are the main costs of your customers’ problem?