A Focused Marketing Effort Yields Measurable Results

Building a profitable alarm company means moving beyond the outdated view that marketing is a “nice to have but we can’t afford it” viewpoint. Otherwise, you’re missing opportunities to gain a competitive edge, and to generate RMR and growth.

Often, however, just the term “marketing” can create confusion. It often feels like experts add to the confusion by creating convoluted marketing “systems” and “functions.” But it’s pretty simple: marketing refers to anything that you do that creates awareness and visibility for your company, with the ultimate goal of generating leads and growing the business.

So how can you get started? Before you dive into anything, first make sure you:

Fully understand your customer and why they buy.

It doesn’t matter if you have state-of-the-art products and fabulous customer service, if a customer doesn’t want it or believes they don’t need it, they will not buy it. Unless you clearly understand what your customer’s problems or pain points are, you won’t persuade anyone that they want or need to buy what you’re offering.

Fully understand yourself and what makes you different.  We all know that people don’t buy things from faceless “companies;” they buy from people they know, like, and trust. In order to know why people should know, like, and trust you, you MUST know why you’re special. If you don’t, how will they? Maybe you give a “wow” customer experience…maybe your installation speed is record-breaking. Whatever it is, make sure you are able to articulate how your customer’s problems marry up perfectly with you and your particular way of delivering the solution to their concerns.

Once you know these basics, there are a couple of other key terms that will help you understand marketing and its impact on your business. They are:

• •Marketing Strategy: Your marketing strategy is “how” you plan to achieve your overall goals. For example, if a goal is to “increase sales revenues,” the accompanying strategy could be to “upgrade customers and generate referrals.” Your marketing strategy will take your topline revenue goal and then decide how you will achieve it.
• •Marketing Plan: Your marketing plan is the blueprint you use to keep a log of the activities you plan to use (and the timing of those activities) in order to generate more leads and meet your business development goals.
• •Marketing Structure: Marketing structure refers to how you set up your organizational structure to ensure there is a responsible person, or people, to undertake and measure marketing activities within your company.

While marketing is simple, it certainly isn’t easy.  To develop a marketing strategy and a plan to consistently create awareness and generate leads can be daunting. But we’re here to help.  If you’re an existing ACA dealer, learn more about our individually branded marketing tools.  If you’re not yet an ACA dealer, find out how to become one!