Vertical Marketing comes down to truly understanding and anticipating your clients’ every move. By going vertical, your clients can grow vertical and positively impact their bottom line.
Author Anthony T. Hinks is quoted as saying “it’s when you’re going vertical that you leave the other players standing.” The game of basketball, an athlete mid-dunk, may immediately come to mind. But these words very much apply to business.
Vertical Marketing – a sales method in which vendors offer goods and services specific to an industry, trade or profession - goes beyond products in a box or prepackaged sales tools. It’s a mindset, the duel effort of zeroing in on a specific market’s shared challenges and objectives, and finding relative solutions that produce long-term results. Additionally, market-specific content and pertinent dialogue between client and rep can help sales professionals leap in front of those supplying boilerplate content or talking points that so many companies distribute aimlessly.
As stated by Janie Smith, author of Smart Advantage, “a differentiator that is not valued by the customer is not a competitive advantage. If it’s not relevant, it doesn’t matter.” Relevance cannot be a part-time discipline. It must be your consistent focus throughout the entire sales process, from initial marketing materials you use to generate leads, to well after the ink dries on the final receipt!
For those wishing to implement it, a successful Vertical Marketing plan requires education, in-depth collaboration and a discovery period of investigating the day-to-day workflow of a specific organization.
Many B2B companies, canned brochures in hand, reach out to customers with a shotgun approach to how their products solve problems. Needs should dictate solutions, not the opposite. Financial institutions are consistently seeking ways to improve security in safeguarding financial records and ensure regulatory compliance. Insurance providers need to leverage instant access to cases to provide efficient customer service. Oil and Gas providers often need ways to centrally manage all business-related files – land documents, well files, pipeline and lease records - from the field.
Vertical Marketing comes down to truly understanding and anticipating your clients’ every move. By going vertical, your clients can grow vertical and positively impact their bottom line.
Three Rungs in Climbing the Vertical Market Ladder:
1. Hone Your Expertise.
Vertical marketing requires an understanding far beyond the products you sell. You need to know the client or prospect’s industry frontwards and backwards – its jargon, its procedures and its perceived path to success. More importantly, you need to be able to focus closely on what obstacles stand in the way of them reaching desired objectives and working at an optimal pace.
With this granular knowledge obtained, you can target your message with laser-like focus to specific clients.
2. Continue to Educate Yourself.
The professional world is a fluid environment. With technology advancements occurring rapidly, ever-changing policies and procedures, the markets you may be after are constantly evolving, maturing, even subdividing into specialized segments. Never stand idle in your pursuit of what a client or individual market’s needs may be.
3. Open Your Ears.
Just as writer and founder of the world Scouting movement Robert Baden-Powell said, "if you make listening and observation your occupation, you will gain much more than you can by talking." The best method for compiling relevant information is forcing yourself into your client’s shoes and shadowing their path. The only way of getting there is by listening.
With more than 50 years of experience developing custom business process-based technology services and solutions for virtually every industry, Datamax knows how to speak the unique language of your business. We understand the vast and distinct differences that exists among industries, which is why we created goVertical. This initiative enhances our focus and expertise on individual markets to empower you to go vertical with your business and bottom line.
In short, Vertical Marketing strategies echoes the mission statement and tagline of Datamax: Relevant Technology, Raving Results.
