I am sure everyone has heard the expression, “Timing is everything.”
Yes, timing is everything but very difficult to achieve in many circumstances. However, there is some low-hanging fruit for marketing timing issues. If you are a retailer, we all know the holidays are a big time to promote your organization. But if you have some specific information about customers, like birthdays, anniversaries or other significant events, you can definitely leverage that to your advantage.
Let’s take my favorite restaurant from my previous post. They know my birthday, my wife’s birthday and our anniversary. So, what do I get from them? I am afraid nothing. For all the personal touches they afford us, they are not taking advantage of some personal knowledge that could affect even more business. If I got a simple email about two weeks in advance of some personal upcoming event, like celebrating one of our birthdays, with a coupon for a bottle of my favorite wine or a free drink for my wife’s favorite scotch, don’t you think that would stimulate some additional reservations and make us even better customers? They could even offer us a private room at no extra cost and special menu items for my grandchildren to celebrate one of our occasions. Truly a lost opportunity. This could be a perfect example of good business timing if executed properly.
In the B2B side, a company can do even more. I believe all commercial customer companies have special times of the year when certain things are meaningful, like planning for a trade show or some special product release. If a trusted partner supplier asks the right questions, you can be ready with suggestions on how you could effectively partner with the company at these critical times. Many times, based on past buying practices, a company may already have some information that can be leveraged without even asking any questions. An astute observation of past practices coupled with good creative ideas and solutions to past challenges can be very rewarding if timed right.
Mr. Schnoll will be presenting on Tuesday, May 13, 2014 at the DOCUMENT Strategy Forum. Don't miss his Power Session P202/P203 “Building Your Converging Content Future Today: The Matrix of Processes, Technologies and Your Data Assets.” For more information on the DOCUMENT Strategy Forum, visit www.documentstrategyforum.com.
