In today’s frantic marketplace it’s easy to miss the true winners.
So many organisations spend so much money advertising, hyping and interrupting across a multitude of media channels, especially at this time of year, that other businesses begin to mistakenly believe that these organisations are hyper successful, and that they need to behave in a similar way in order to compete and sell more.
But, when you do some proper research, nothing can be further from the truth.
The companies that rely on promotions and advertising to build their brands, and sell their goods or services are often the ones that are the most vulnerable, and the most likely to fail in the long-term.
They have built a brand on appearance, hype and interrupting.
And the minute they stop doing this will be the minute that their customers desert them in favour of someone else who happens to be shouting louder / selling cheaper at the moment.
A good example of this philosophy and practice can be seen in the branded fast food market. Take away the marketing, and many of these brands will die almost overnight.
So, what’s the alternative?
Let’s take some advice from the builder of arguably the biggest brand on the planet: Jeff Bezos.
He said: ‘Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room’.
i.e. It doesn’t matter what YOU think your brand means or stands for: the only thing that matters in the long term is what your customer thinks it stands for.
We suggest that in the world of two way mass communication, driven by the Internet and social media, the power of customer reputation and referral is the strongest brand building force of all time.
And maybe, in this market, the best brands are the ones that are built backwards. The ones that start with creating genuine value and positioning themselves as the best quality at a fair price.
And then keep building, inch by inch, by genuinely valuing their customers, building loyalty and gathering feedback for continual improvement.
We call this “Slow Selling”.
No, it’s not sexy and it won’t make you a fortune overnight, but it will drive long-term high growth in sales, repeat business, reputation, referrals, and continual low risk innovation and improvement.
And this WILL make you a fortune over the long term…
And it’s incredible how powerful advertising is at misleading us, because we all know that the last paragraph above is true, and yet we still believe the hype, while we all use products and services produced with the ‘Slow Selling’ common sense belief in mind.
Some examples:
- Google achieved market domination through customer experience, not clever marketing
- Amazon drive continual customer loyalty and sales growth through customer experience, not promotions
- Apple drive amazing levels of customer loyalty and cross selling through customer experience, not special offers
Of course this is all blindingly obvious common sense, but whenever has common sense been common practice?
Your challenge, if you want to be truly successful and profitable building your brand in the long-term is to slow down, stop trying to promote yourself and tell people how amazing you are, and, instead, focus on winning customers through reputation and referral, and keeping them through loyalty, experience and trust.
Welcome to another year of Slow Selling!
Slow Selling is a UK based not for profit organisation for leaders of independent businesses.
It is a methodology to help you slow down, set up systems for long term success, and use these to grow sales and profits through reputation, attraction, recommendation and referral.
Without wasting time, money and stress on unnecessary marketing and promotions.
To find out more, please click here
