You might have heard of The Marlboro Effect but maybe you’re still not too sure what it is? Well the Marlboro Effect is a business concept your company needs to know and to understand.
It can be the difference between your business growing and your company pouring too many resources into an unsustainable business model and not growing at all. It is the relationship between overinvestment in the poor marketing strategies and choices and the lack of corresponding revenue growth.
What is Marlboro effect?
Let’s dig deeper. The Marlboro Effect is what happens when there’s a large amount of money invested in your company’s marketing and sales teams, but an underwhelming revenue performance follows.
The Marlboro Effect is really a symptom or a way of identifying a deeper issue.
If a business injects finance into their marketing strategy and sales teams, and not enough income comes back in from sales, right away that company is heading for a financial loss. But if the company doesn’t adjust the strategy then the loss will just get bigger. But this all just a symptom of a bigger problem.
Let’s get familiar with the people and strategies that matter:
- Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is the company whose behaviors best define your organization’s most valuable customer.
- A Marketing Qualified Lead is a potential Customer that has shown interest in a product but isn’t in the buying stage yet.
- A Sales Qualified Lead is a potential Customer that has been given the best possible information by the Sales Team and is now on the way to buying said product.
- Your Hand-Off Strategy is your plan of action on how to get your Marketing Qualified Leads(MQLs) to become Sales Qualified Leads(SQLs).
But if you haven’t defined your Ideal Customer Profile and don’t have your best Hand-Off Strategy in place, how can you then expect to turn the MQLs into SQLs and eventually into Customers?!
So How Does A Company Overcome This?
We can see from above that The Marlboro Effect is a result of an Ideal Customer Profile that’s undefined and a Hand-Off Strategy that isn’t fine-tuned.
So we need to correct both of those issues! When it comes to your Ideal Customer Profile, stop and think for a minute. Which customers would benefit the most from your product? If you’ve been in business for a while, then think of the customers you’ve closed sales with. If you’re a new business, then think about your potential best customers.
Can you use AI for this? What are the tools and skills available to ensure you have identified your ICP. But in both cases, you must amend your marketing strategies to reach those ideal customers.
Next we’ve got to work on the Hand-Off Strategy. Employing an effective MQL to SQL Hand-Off Strategy will result in more Customers, leading to bigger revenues! Ensuring the MQL to SQL Hand-Off goes smoothly raises the chances of the Lead becoming a Customer.
Supporting the Lead by way of fantastic product knowledge, personalized content and staying in contact via phone or emails, etc., is the best way to make the Hand-Off go as smoothly as possible. The better the experience for the Lead, the more chances of them being converted into a Customer.
Why does it matter?
Inefficient marketing strategies lead to insufficient income. And this leads to a financial loss for the company in both the long and short term. So let’s fix it! Work towards your ICP. Use AI. Use the tools that can help your sales team nail the customers that count. Invest in the right planning now and reap the benefits down the road. We have so much experience in this area, feel free to get in touch for some tips on where to start.
