How Far Do Your Loyalists Go?

Every successful business needs some loyalists.

Loyalists are generally satisfied customers, but not always. Friends and family make great loyalists as do suppliers and vendors.

Loyalists move to the next level when they become brand evangelists. Evangelists spread the good word about your product or service. They are the ones feeding the word-of-mouth, generating referrals and recommending your business to others. They drive your passive marketing efforts.

So how far do your loyalists go? Are they evangelizing? Are they willing to take on a permanent tattoo on their body to show their loyalty?

Perhaps few loyalists will go that far, save the ones pictured here.

Nevertheless, the point should be clear: move your business to the next level by creating brand loyalists willing to go to the extreme to express their devotion and willing to do whatever it takes to spread your good word.

So maybe instead of asking "how far do your loyalists go?" I should ask "what are you doing to create brand loyalists willing to go to the extreme for you?"

Avoid the Mud and Get S.M.A.R.T.

S.M.A.R.T. Marketing is the only way to go when planning your marketing.

Many businesses simply market their products or services by throwing mud at the wall and seeing what sticks. Not only is this approach short-sighted, it’s also very messy.

Instead of simply throwing mud at the wall, think through your marketing. Make it S.M.A.R.T.: Strategic, Measureable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-bound.

Here is what I mean:

• Strategic: focus on the long-term and the big picture and not the tactics. Strategy drives tactics, not the other way around. We can all get drowned in the tactics of marketing initiatives: e-mail, direct mail, websites, events, etc. But real results occur when a strategy is set in place. Seth Godin’s got a great blog on strategy vs tactics that is worth a quick read. Remember, set and follow a strategy first. Then, worry about the tactics.

• Measureable: be sure you measure your marketing efforts. A little math goes a long way. Response rates, conversion rates, click rates, open rates, hits, calls, subscribers and other metrics will help you understand if you are getting bang for your buck. If you don’t measure, you cannot determine the return on your marketing dollars.

• Achievable: you certainly want to stretch and push your capabilities, but make sure you can accomplish what you set out to do. If your strategy is too lofty, you can beat yourself up and lose focus.

• Realistic: understand your brand and how people are drawn to it. Make sure your marketing efforts complement and grow the ways in which most customers find your brand. This really comes into play when you set up your marketing budget. $10,000 for a new website would be terrific, but will it generate the return?

• Time-bound: the best marketing plans have a time limit. Set up a strategic plan with a number of tactics for 6 months. After that time, evaluate. Keep and expand what is working, discard what is not. I recommend at least 6 months, though I’ve seen plans that work with less or more time. The key is the time boundary. Without it, there is no evaluation period, no measurement and no learnings.

So avoid the mud of messy marketing tactics by uniting them all under one S.M.A.R.T. Marketing Plan. Front loading a little work at the beginning will go a long way to moving you business to the next level.