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Low Cost Marketing Brings Great Results - Says Humpty

By Tom Lambert

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Published: 03Aug2009
Word count: 697
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When the chips are down, and you need to retain your key customers and bring in the best new ones, then Low Cost Marketing or Selling, or even No Cost Marketing, can be the answer you seek. "It sounds too good to be true, how can I believe you?", you ask. Bear with me for a few moments and I'll explain (with a little prompting from my advisor, Humpty).

The tale begins nearly 15 years ago now when I began to put into practise lessons learned whilst working with the great Howard Shenson. I had never actually met Howard, but I was a great admirer of his work and his early death from a heart attack had saddened and shaken me. Howard had single-handedly researched what the highest earning business consultants in the USA actually do to build and sustain high income practices. (Personal Earnings of $1,000,000 per annum and upwards.)

I had been invited to review Howard's ground-breaking book, "Shenson on Consulting". I was blown away except, having been brought up in the "where's your evidence for that?" school of science, I was a little concerned that we might be generalising too readily from research that was purely North American. I contacted Howard to ask if there was clear evidence that showed that what was true in the USA was equally true globally. His reply was typical of the man, "Let's find out". So I too became involved in the research in Europe and beyond.

The results indicated that Howard had been right. Where his work was known the highest earners were using "no cost marketing", where the work was not widely known, they would have been enormously better off had they done so.

Humpty intervenes

I can virtually feel Humpty, the inveterate lover of "operational definitions" tugging at my sleeve. He, and probably you, my reader, are both wondering when I am going to indicate something that is relevant to the price of fish. Now seems to be a good time. No Cost Marketing is the avoidance of what Howard would call, "paid for promotional puffery", which is replaced by a totally convincing demonstration of what you have to offer. This is the point at which Customer Engagement and No Cost Marketing converge. There can be no more convincing proof that you deliver superior customer service than when your delighted and loyal customers engage themselves in bringing superior customers - including, in some cases their competition - to beat a path to your door. It is the ultimate demonstration of customer loyalty, and is the real 'No Cost Advertising'.

Is that the end of the story? By no means - no cost marketing is only another stop on the exciting customer journey that is true Customer Engagement. The next opportunity that real Customer Engagement delivers is that of ethical Market Dominance.

This time I had better satisfy Humpty's need for definition immediately.

Market Dominance is when you are delivering products and services so matched to your engaged customers' needs that your competitors have no other choice than to spend time and money playing the game according to your rules. The evidence is that "me too" strategies rarely if ever work so, having dissipated valuable resources your competitors continue to cede to you the vital edge as your customers help you to build your worthwhile business.

And it does not stop there. Growth in the numbers and quality of your worthwhile customers gives you a rare opportunity to save more time and money and continue to hit your competitors below the waterline.

Even in the best run companies some customers are more hassle to serve than they are worth. Research shows that if you can create an Action Plan that will enable you to build your worthwhile business through engaged customers - and, of course, your own activities - you can afford to release those that are more trouble to serve than they are worth. These will be snapped up by your competition and they will carry the extra cost of servicing their demands.

Once Customer Engagement enables you to think in terms of Ethical Market Dominance you are in control of the only worthwhile game in town.

While Tom Lambert sits around theorising, you can access advice and support from our mature team of global authorities including David Butler, our Managing Director and the highly respected founder of the Butler Cox Foundation and Peter Urey, one of the most successful Sales and Marketing Directors from the IT world. www.tripleic.com.

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