Sir Francis Bacon famously declared that “knowledge itself is power” and this applies as much to marketing as it does to any other discipline. Lack of knowledge spawned another truism popular in the trade: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”
John Wanamaker (or was it Lord Leverhulme?) recognised it is easy to squander money without the right intelligence, and even today a poor understanding of customers and audiences could easily doom your sales and marketing efforts.
Gathering knowledge is particularly important now as we prepare plans and objectives for 2023. In today’s volatile economic environment, customer attitudes are changing fast. How can you keep up with what they are thinking? Here’s a radical idea: try asking them.
At Europa, we spend most of our time speaking to customers and prospects with specific lead generation targets in mind. But not every call has to be the precursor of a sales pitch. Instead, we can deliver market-scoping campaigns to enrich your knowledge in a range of areas, including:
Understanding your customers, for example by asking about their challenges and preferred solutions to gain a more rounded view of your customer base than you can achieve through statistical data.
Understanding prospects – both in terms of segment potential and their decision-making structures to support ABM campaigns
Validating value propositions, by testing whether your solutions to customer problems are likely to work in the real world and seeing how well your messaging is understood.
Setting baselines, for instance to work out how well your brand or product is known or liked in the market, so you can establish measurable outcomes for your campaigns.
Sometimes companies are loathe to invest in this kind of research, presumably because there is a feeling that existing market data is sufficient, and the money could be better spent directly on lead generation.
However, smart sales and marketing leaders recognise that even a brief insight-gathering campaign can achieve a strong return on investment by informing lead generation planning, budget allocation and justification. If you fancy adding power to your campaigns next year or next quarter, get in touch.
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