Successful Campaigns Start with a Question

What Keeps Your Customers up at Night? 

Understanding customer pain points is the first step to demonstrating that you understand your customer’s needs and can solve those quiet frustrations. In many technology sectors, the tendency is to focus on features rather than customer benefits. Asking questions is the first step to developing an in-depth knowledge of a market or application and enables a much deeper level of customer understanding. 

A common trap is to fall in love with your product before really understanding the needs of the customer. The customer does not care about many of the “features” if they do the job but will care about the one “benefit” that solves a specific problem. Another trap is assuming the customer knows what they need. They are expert in their application but not necessarily in the components that it relies on. By asking targeted questions, you can discover your competitive advantage and potentially avoid difficult negotiations on price. A good example of this is offering a premium but more cost-effective part that simplifies the manufacturing process, saving time and money in production. But if the customer does not fully understand the production process they will often default to a lower cost part unless guided by the supplier. 

Who is your customer?

There are many ways to conduct market research, from asking existing customers open questions, to visiting trade shows and talking to independent experts. The factory tour is a fantastic way to discover the challenges a customer is facing. By walking round their facility, asking questions, and seeing what goes on, you can gain real insights into their daily challenges and how you may be able to help them. By taking an interest in their world, you build trust and credibility, whilst quietly acquiring knowledge and the competitive advantage.

By understanding the frustrations of a few, you can build a campaign that addresses the needs of the many and align your product accordingly. It may be that the product development team envisaged scenarios A, B, and C, but through local market research you have discovered scenarios D and E. This may require the marketing department to reimagine promotional materials in ways to widen the accessible market and help target market needs, ensuring that the specifics of a given industry are highlighted. 

Persona development is the next step to a successful campaign. Take your initial market research and develop it into three or four target personas. Test them internally to ensure you have understood the customer profiles correctly and then test the assumptions in the wild to check and refine. This will enable you to position your offer directly to the key decision makers and demonstrate an understanding of their applications, needs, and pain points.

A successful campaign depends on many assets coming together for the launch, from promotional materials to advertising and website landing pages. It is important to ensure that the customer facing teams are well informed ahead of the launch and have the necessary collateral to take the campaign to the market. Another trap to avoid, is the “confidential” power point presentation. It is often the case that during the building of a campaign, lots of internal documentation is created and some will be confidential. But it is good practice to ensure that the vast majority of materials created are suitable for customer viewing. Arming a sales engineer with a “confidential” power point has little purpose beyond the initial briefing. The website should provide insightful information for the target audience and arm the sales engineer with sufficient background knowledge to ask well informed questions in front of the customer. 

I do not know but I know someone who does

When entering unfamiliar markets, there will be a steep learning curve as part of the discovery phase and sales engineers need to be well informed as previously discussed. The campaign collateral should provide the vast majority of information needed to engage with customers, but it is okay not to know the answer to every question. That is, so long as the question is followed up promptly with an answer. 

Brand building is a core part of any market development campaign. Consistent messaging, targeted visuals, and language that the customer relates to, goes a long way to establishing credibility, authority, and understanding with the target audience. Be creative with marketing materials to stand out from the crowd and make your audience think. Ensure that the solutions matrix is established at launch to link customer applications with products, services, and expertise. This will ensure that there is a seamless experience for prospective customers across multiple channels. 

Celebrate successes, even the small ones

Celebrating success with internal teams is critically important to the outcome of a campaign. A successful sale, however small, demonstrates the value of the campaign, and offers a learning experience to help win more. Sales teams love a competition so use every success to fuel the sales engine. It also creates valuable marketing collateral to continue building credibility. 

Campaigns provide a focus for the organisation, facilitates collaboration and ensures everyone is pushing in the same direction. Remember, a campaign should not be measured solely on the units sold, but also on the boost to brand awareness and customer engagement. Sales do not always happen overnight, but strong consistent brand positioning will pay dividends over time. 

Learn more about the importance of communicating with purpose and clarity. 

Duncan Nicol 2026