What a week it was last week. The world is changing before our eyes.
What interested financial services companies a week ago may well now hit a brick wall. Our business intelligence team, calling into banks this week on behalf of various clients, have been met with everything from “I’ve just been made redundant” to “I don’t know what’s going on, I simply can’t talk to you – it’s all up in the air.”
So what action can you take, right now, to keep on generating leads? To make sure your marketing messages will continue to strike home?
1. Talk to your customers, more on this below
2. Find out where there is still opportunity to sell. (we’re tracking several of these areas – get in touch if you want to sign up for our email newsletters on this)
3. Find cost-effective ways of getting your message in front of people – and prove why you are worth their time
Our own experience, only last week, was showing that what mattered a month ago is seen as frivolous now. The unusual market conditions are definitely creating opportunities but they are not always immediately obvious.
To use a B2C example, The Sunday Times reported yesterday that John Lewis has seen a 247% increase in sales of hot water bottles versus this time last year. Presumably this is people trying to conserve their cash by keeping the central heating switched off. Makes thrifty sense, but not an immediately obvious market opportunity.
It goes to show that, in a time of unprecedented goings-on, no-one can know for sure what will work. For B2B, it’s back to basics marketing – the most important action you can take is to get out there and ask some questions of your clients.
Ask them how, in this new environment, they will be making decisions, ask what are the pressures they’re facing, and what is valuable to them now. Understand how their own customers are behaving. You need to really understand both of these aspects to be able to put together proposition and messages that will engage them in uncharted territory.
We’ve made available our own client insight questionnaire to speed things up for you. Download it here: customer-insight-questionnaire.Your buyers’ worries (and their urgent need for future performance) are a real opportunity – if you understand them properly.
3 comments
From my perspective of working in the Business Intelligence team who are making calls to financial services prospects, I can’t highlight enough the need for organisations to maintain accurate upto-date data.
There have been so many changes in terms of contact names with the current environment of redundancies and job merging that to launch an effective campaign you must first have these building blocks in place.
The only way to do this is to ensure that your data is cleaned, and cleaned regularly, it might seem like its a chore but it is well spent time and money.
The situation reminds me of what a lot of buyers told us in our research – that the suppliers who get most business from them are the ones that are there even when there’s not an immediate project or budget to discuss.
Buyers may be overwhelmed right now, but things are changing day by day and it won’t be long until the Board decisions designed to safeguard the company lead to a need for targeted investments – and buyers will be looking to trusted suppliers for ideas and advice…
@Paul, agreed – in fact last night I spoke to the owner of a compliance software company who told me business is absolutely booming from the banks for him right now, for exactly that reason – kept in touch, is seen as a trusted advisor, and they know that more regulation is coming their way.
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