Underrated Series – Part 1

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Welcome to the first edition of our new weekly blog series, The Underrated Series. Each week, we will highlight an important, often underrated component of marketing success.

What are we underrating this week? Someone that answers the phone.

When it comes to making our companies more profitable, most decisions focus on saving money. Because we want to save money, we look to technology to help us. If people can purchase directly from our website, why do we need salespeople? If people can chat online with a customer service rep, why do we need to provide a phone number?

But the problem is, we are underrating the phone call. For most companies that do business online, a significant portion of sales still happen over the phone.

Why?

Because people buy from people, not websites. Some don’t feel comfortable sharing crucial information online. Some want the reassurance of someone to answer their questions and putting their minds at ease.

When we focus on money-saving solutions to our profitability problem, we ignore the other side of the equation. You can also look to increase revenue. And maybe having people to answer the phones will help you do this.

Stop putting up walls between your company and your customers. If they want to call you, let them. You are there to serve them, not the other way around.

Have something you think deserves more attention? Send us your suggestions for the Underrated Series using the comments below or submit them here.

Underrated Series Introduction

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Something you quickly notice if you start rummaging through the web for marketing advice is this – most writers speak in absolutes. You must do this or that to achieve success. This medium or that channel is dead.

These huge, definitive statements are not only mostly wrong, they’re distracting. Because anyone who is truly looking for help guiding their company to growth and success will miss out on some of the more simple tips out there.

We tend to overrate the importance of certain things. Just like we tend to underrate the importance of other things.

With that in mind, I’d like to announce the start of a new weekly blog series that will kick off with part 1 next week. It’s called, the Underrated Series.

Each week, I’ll highlight an important, and underrated component of marketing success. You can see past examples of this here, and here.

If you stick around, I think you’ll learn something.

How Can I Help You?

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“How can I help you?” It might be the most important question in the world.

For marketers, asking that question can help us in many different ways.

To Customers: How can I help you better solve your problems?

To Your Boss: How can I help you better reach your goals?

To Your Sales Team: How can I help you better sell to our leads?

To Your Product Team: How can I help you better create something that sells?

Our jobs are all about helping people succeed. When we help others succeed, we help ourselves succeed.

The Problems with Analytics

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Data is a good thing. The more we know about our customers, our website visitors, our business processes, the better off we should be.

But there are problems that come with analytics. If you are working in a data-driven company, or are in the process of changing over to a data-driven culture, be sure to avoid these common missteps.

1. The data is wrong.

The first problem that many companies encounter is that the data they are collecting and analyzing is incorrect or incomplete. Often you’ll find that there are gaps in your data, or things don’t match from one system to the next. Then you have to go back and try to piece your data together manually to get a more accurate look at your business.

Sometimes, it is not immediately obvious that the data is wrong. So you start using it to make important business decisions. And you don’t find out until it’s too late that those decisions were made looking at incorrect information.

You need to be very confident that your data is correct and complete before relying on it to make important decisions that will impact the future of your business.

2. You’re using the wrong metrics.

Know what problem you want to solve or what question you want to answer before you start getting too involved with data analysis. It is far too easy to spend a lot of time and energy analyzing one metric or set of metrics, when it’s something else entirely that should be commanding your attention.

Just because you are able to see something, doesn’t mean it’s important. Be sure to prioritize your data analysis based on the impact it can have on your business.

3. You’re missing the big picture.

Analysis paralysis is real, people. It’s when you get too bogged down in vast world of analytics and are unable to pull yourself out and look at your business as a whole.

Sure, it’s easy to think that data will solve all your problems. If we improve this metric and that metric, the business will naturally improve with it. But if you start thinking on a smaller scale, focusing too intently on the numbers, you may find yourself unable to see the forest for the trees.