Understand Your Customers’ Compelling Events To Win More Business

Every business has compelling events, which means that every customer will be compelled, at various moments in time, to seek out the products or services you sell. Your job is to identify those compelling events and ensure that your marketing is in place just at the moment those compelling events come around.

Perhaps I should start by first explaining what a ‘compelling event’ is.

In a marketing context, a compelling event is a situation that will arise in a customer’s life that will compel them to make one or several purchases. A good example in B2B marketing would be an office move. The impending office move date is the compelling event, and before this time comes around the customer is likely to have made several purchases that relate to that compelling event, such as office removal services, new signage, new stationery, new office cleaners etc.

What is important about a compelling event is that it has a deadline. The customer has to make their purchase decision by the time the compelling event comes around. This then helps marketers create communications that are not only very relevant, but also perfectly timed.

Do you know ALL your customers’ compelling events?

No doubt you will already know many of your customers’ obvious compelling events – those events which already compel your customers to contact you to make a purchase. So, a business moving office needs a signage company; or in in the B2C market, perhaps someone who updates their Facebook status to ‘Engaged’ is likely to need wedding-related products and services. These are fairly obvious compelling events with equally obvious products and services people will buy as a result.

But there might well be compelling events that you don’t know about or haven’t considered.

So for instance, does the print company know which businesses are recruiting new staff and will therefore need new business cards? (business cards are a small order but are a great foot in the door), or does the conference venue know when local businesses run their offsite team events?

These are less obvious compelling events, but nonetheless well worth knowing if a business is looking to broaden its sales reach.

Three reasons why new compelling events are so valuable

Firstly, what is great about unearthing new and different compelling events is the lack of competition. Not many other conference venues will know when local businesses will have their company events, so the one venue that does take the time to research this, is unlikely to be up against other venues at the right moment.

The second reason is cost. Yes, there is an investment required to research the market to a) find out the full breadth of your customers’ compelling events and b) then researching when your target markets are going to experience those compelling events. But your resulting target audience will be greatly reduced in size to a group of potential customers that are much more likely to be interested in your products or services. And being more targeted can certainly translate to spending less money in the longer term.

The third reason is credibility. Over time, your target customers will see that you typically contact them when they are likely to need you. You look smart. This adds to their perception of you as a supplier that helps them fix their problems rather than a supplier that communicates generic, irrelevant or badly timed messages.

Now it’s your turn

Go research and brainstorm the events that occur in your target customers’ lives and then define which of them would benefit from the products or services you offer. Contact these customers with well-executed marketing activities and you’ll be there just when they need you.

 

 

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