Marketing has changed – fundamentally

Barnaby Wynter has spent over 25 years advising and creating over 450 brands, many of which are instantly familiar and household names. When presenting to one of our groups previously, he explained that marketing has fundamentally changed whilst at the same time becoming the most important discipline for businesses today.

Many businesses are burning the bulk of their marketing spend on outdated, demographically inspired media. Barnaby points out that today it’s about psychographics, not demographics. We want to buy from people like us that we can relate to.

He also points out that very few businesses have a real Unique Selling Proposition today and the worldwideweb has given consumers much more choice with an average of 18,000 marketing messages being received by every person, every day.

So we have to have a clear Value Proposition – How will buying this improve my quality of life. A business story to make the prospect think, ‘I get it – I understand why you are worth more than the money in my pocket.’

Barnaby explains how ‘Brand is Key.’ Brand is the experience that affects the relationship between a product or service and its consumer. To say ‘I’ve heard of you’ simply isn’t enough any more.

Barnaby proposes a six step process for developing the relationship between your business and your customer (or paying prospect as Barnaby proposes we call them):

Awareness – I’ve heard of you and recognise you.
Image match – I relate to you.
Facts match – I know what you can do for me
Test drive – You do what you say
Usage – I am happy I bought from you
Loyalty – I don’t want to go anywhere else

The golden nugget of thinking that will stick with me was:

Never stop treating people as prospects. Even when they have bought from you; competitors will be treating them as prospects so you should be too.

For more great inspiration on brands and marketing read Barnaby’s book or follow his daily marketing tips on twitter @TheBrandBucket