Margo Aaron - How to Market without Marketing
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Margo has very generously shared her: “No Stress Brand Foundations to Creating Your Customer Avatar.”
Our guest Margo Aaron is the founder of Argotics, a company that specializes in helping businesses increase sales without the use of clichéd marketing tactics. Drawing from her background in academia, market research, and psychology, Margo offers up an enormous amount of priceless insight into her field.
During our talk we cover a wide range of topics, including:
- How to create an avatar (customer profile) for your business.
- How to use your avatar to formulate effective marketing strategies.
- The key to making sales without feeling like you’re selling anything.
- Margo’s secret marketing weapon.
Re-framing Your Perspective Marketing
Marketing is much more than just promotion or social media. It encompasses every single touchpoint your customers have with your organization. In other words, anything that leaves an impression on your customer or leads is a part of your marketing.
Brand vs. Marketing Your brand is a set of impressions people have about your organization. Half of this is made up of what you tell them about your brand, and the other half is what they experience from your brand. Marketing is really about relationships. It relates to how you show people that you really care about them and how to convey to them that you have a solution to their problem.
Content vs. Context The place where you put your message says as much as what you actually write in your message. A flyer, radio ad, and television ad with the same content do not have the same context. Keep this in mind when crafting a campaign and make sure that you are communicating sincerity.
Creating an Avatar for Your Business
An avatar is a profile of your ideal customer. Start creating this profile by understanding the hopes, fears, dreams, and resistance points of your ideal customer.
Ask yourself:
- What are they afraid of?
- What is keeping them up at night?
- Are they thinking your product or service?
- Do they know it exists?
Write the answers to these questions in the words of your customers and try to capture their mood. Your avatar should read like the inner thoughts of your customers, including the things they think to themselves but would never say out loud.
Margo has very generously shared her: “No Stress Brand Foundations to Creating Your Customer Avatar.”
Click Here to Download It!
How to Market (and Sell) without Marketing
We live in a culture where we have everything we need, so we choose what we purchase based on emotion rather than necessity. As a business owner or entrepreneur, re-frame your thinking and instead of concentrating on selling your product, focus on building a relationship with your customers.
Tell and show your customers how your product or service solves their problem and you will make sales without feeling like you’ve engaged in marketing or a sales pitch.
Getting Started with Marketing Strategy
- The Brand Conversation: Have a brand foundation in place (i.e. why you’re doing what you’re doing, what your values are, what is the persona you want to exude).
- The Customer Conversation: How do you want to communicate with your customers? Dive deep into who your customer really is with your avatar.
Reverse engineer a marketing strategy based on the information you gathered.
Margo’s Secret Marketing Weapon
Qualitative, open-ended surveys are an excellent way to learn about your customers. Send welcome email and ask the following questions:
- How did you find out about us?
- What would you like to hear more about?
- What are you struggling with?
Don’t be surprised if your customers share with you lots of invaluable information that you can use to shape your next product offering or marketing campaign.
Make sure to check out…
Book - No B.S. Direct Marketing
Margo’s “Ideal Customer Avatar Worksheet”
