Hello…is it me you’re looking for?

Did you know that Lionel Richie is a marketing genius?  It’s time to take some data driven marketing lessons from Lionel Richie.

Improve how we do things, score some major success and make marketing  Easy…(Like a Sunday Morning)

Plan your marketing like you are going On Tour

When you are putting a marketing plan together, you’ll be basing performance around improving on what has happened in the past.  Yes, you’ll need to include some key strategies around things that are planned to happen – such as new product launches or the introduction new services.   But overall, you will be planning to do things BETTER.

The problem can be finding the time to mix things up.  As planning can mean extra work, you’ve still got to make sure everything else is working.  And, of course, things need to happen fast.  As soon as you complete one urgent task, then the next urgent thing is waiting impatiently on your to do list.  The thing is to get things right, you need time to reflect and think.

The lean start up philosophy is built around a concept of learning through a process of setting micro objectives.

It’s a great process to adopt, but more fun with Lionel Richie leading the way.

Introducing Lean Marketing – Lionel Richie Style

A three step process based on around Lionel Richie’s secret marketing algorithm

More Haste + Less Speed = Easy (like a Sunday Morning)

Step One: Say Hello

Do a Lionel Richie, say ‘Hello‘.  Assess what it is that you are really looking for. What is the one thing will really make a difference to your business

Step Two: Go ‘On Tour’

Put the plan into action by going ‘On Tour’.   Like all Music / Entertainment Tours, when Lionel goes on tour – he doesn’t do the entire tour in a day – it will take months.

He goes city by city, arena by arena.  Sometimes he stays in one place for a while and sometimes he takes a little break and reflects on things.

Learn from Lionel.  Put your marketing plan into action, one step at a time – like going on a tour, measure your progress, and plan in breaks so you can reflect on your performance.

NOTE:  The Lean Start Up movement tend to say ‘Get Out of the building’.  However, they don’t necessarily say when you need to come back!)

Step Three: Read the reviews

Your ‘Tour’ has ended.  What was the result?  Did you make enough progress to go ‘On Tour’ again?

If your plan works then keep doing it and move to the next thing. As Lionel says ‘Once, Twice, Three times (a lady)‘.

However, and more importantly when it doesn’t work it encourages you to STOP.  Take a look around.  Review what hasn’t worked.

In some cases – sadly – this might mean stop altogether, and that’s ok. You’ll invested what you consider to be the right amount of time and money and not received the return you expect.

In others, you’ll realise you missed something that is now obvious. A slight change of things and you’re off again, safe in the knowledge that you’ve saved a load of time and money by not moving in the wrong direction.

When you do get it right, this process of planning, going ‘On Tour’, measuring and then reviewing should result in a logical order of continuous improvement.

How Lionel has put this into practice (maybe…)

For Lionel he has been writing hits for a long time, and touring the new stuff.  However, people keep asking for the old stuff, the classics.

He’s listened and perhaps measured a drop in ticket sales.

He thinks that the old stuff is what people are looking for.  Hello, Easy, Dancing on the Ceiling and all the others.

So on his last ‘Tour’ in 2015, which included the famous ‘legends’ slot on Sunday afternoon at Glastonbury –  he’s dropped the new stuff and only played the classics.

How you can be more like Lionel Richie put this into practice and become a “Rockstar Marketer”

For businesses, a lot of measuring their performance when ‘On Tour’ are based around understanding the outcomes from marketing activity.

However, measurement of Opens and Clicks can be misleading.

To truly understand performance, you need to measure the end outcome and that usually means a sale or an information based response of some-kind – beyond the open or click.

For Websand we are helping businesses to really understand the outcomes from their email marketing and use this knowledge to develop more responsive marketing messages that are in line with the ‘Hello‘ that their customers are looking for.

So far, we’ve helped clients achieve response rates 100% higher than industry averages, and understand what messages really make a difference to different types of customers.

If you are looking to really understand the outcomes from your marketing. Drive your business forward, or get your business customer centric and make sure that your customers are ‘Stuck on you‘ then get in touch and say ‘Hello‘.

It could be Websand you’ve been looking for.

Saul.
CEO @websand

P.S.  This Lionel Richie tribute post in in honour of the fact that 2015 was the year of Lionel Richie.  Someone has even made a massive paper mache head and put it on kickstarter.  The great man himself was one of the bidders.  This is quite a story, and we won’t be upset at all if you take a look here.

With special thanks to Daily Dot for the headline image (it’s brilliant)

You are my Destiny

Yes, you too could become an expert Lean Marketer, just like Lionel Richie.  Sign up below and we’ll show you how.  It’s your ‘Destiny‘