Lean principles is a common buzz phrase in marketing departments and companies looking to do more with less. When implemented correctly, lean principles can help with lead generation and omni-channel marketing.

But what do we mean by lean principles, and how can they be applied to small businesses and omni-channel companies? That’s what we look at in this article, so read on to find out.

Pains of Small Business and Omni-Channel

As many business owners know, the last few years have been a difficult time. There has been a rise in small business loans, as more companies look for alternative ways to keep themselves afloat.

Companies of all sizes – from SMBs to large retail stores – have been moving away from physical stores for some time now. But this was sped up by the pandemic and changes in shopping habits.

As a result, the concept of an omni-channel salesforce is becoming more popular. In short, this refers to customer service representatives using all available channels for lead generation, which are then funneled into sales.

 Most companies outsource their technical development to vendors, which can get pretty expensive. However, omni-channel sales require different marketing efforts, despite many companies seeing their marketing budget being slashed.

 So, how is omni-channel marketing meant to drive growth and generate leads without the necessary budget? This is where lean marketing comes in.

What Do We Mean by Lean?

The idea of lean started with lean manufacturing in Henry Ford’s factories. He was the first person to popularize the idea of a production chain. But he went beyond just streamlining production – lean manufacturing involved rearranging the factory into specialist machines rather than general-process machines. This might sound obvious to us, but it was the first time it had really happened.

Lean manufacturing was picked up by the fathers of Tokyo industry in the 1930s to massively improve the possible variety in a factory. Bosses at Toyota rearranged their factories so products flowed in assembly and production order to create a finished product. This is essentially how manufacturing still works.

If you’d like a good book that explains this in more detail, read The Lean Startup by Eric Ries to have an agile mindset and  understand lean development.

What is Lean Marketing?

Lean marketing essentially works on the same principles as lean manufacturing. It allows marketing departments to get the most value for their customers while using the least amount of resources and marketing budget.

It boils down to lead generation and sales conversion using a person-centered approach. This includes analysis of the customer experience and journey to create a success plan for the marketing department.

Lean marketing works as part of an omni-channel salesforce by drawing customers from all possible channels and funneling them into the sales process. Unsurprisingly, it relies primarily on lead generation to do this.

What are Lean Principles?

Regardless of the industry, anyone using lean processes will rely on similar lean principles. The biggest difference is the focus of these principles, although the basic ideas don’t change much. In lean marketing, they are:

• Define Value
• Map Value Stream
• Create Flow
• Pull Value
• Seek Perfection

Define Value

Finding your target audience is a vital part of any proper marketing plan. But it’s even more essential in lean marketing because you can’t define value if you don’t know your target audience. The better defined it is, the more successful you’re likely to be at speaking directly to your audience’s needs.

Similar to any business’s value proposition, you need to know your target audience’s:

• Pain points
• Demands
• Metrics
• Timeline
• Expectations
• Resources

Knowing these equates to your target audience value proposition. In lean omni-channel marketing, you need to understand your audience so you can effectively target and funnel it to your sales portal.

For example, your marketing goal could be an email marketing campaign that targets a specific audience. The clearer your audience idea, the better realized this campaign will be.

Map Value Stream

A value stream map is an outline of all the steps and actions required to turn your marketing idea into a goal. Mapping your value stream gives you a better understanding of your business operations and helps cut down on unnecessary resources.

For example, in an omni-channel salesforce, your value stream map could show how you’ll turn interested customers into fulfilled orders. The value stream here could include buying the product, order fulfilment, and shipping

Create Flow

Optimizing your flow means removing wasteful expenses. To do this, you’ll need an accurate value stream map, so you can see where you might be losing money. In principle, this is an easy step because you should already have most of the information you need to make decisions.

However, one of the biggest challenges companies can face during the flow optimization stage is communication. Flows will often involve several departments across a company, meaning it’s vital that everyone involved understands lean marketing. This ensures you’ll actually improve productivity and efficiency because everyone will (theoretically) understand what they need to do.

Pull Value

Traditional marketing is basically a “push” mentality. You use adverts to push your product on potential customers as needed. But lean marketing works on a “pull” mentality that relies on delivering value at a much faster rate.

It’s much easier for a lean marketing department to keep up with market trends and respond to these. Doing so allows you to pull your target audience in through marketing content, as they’ll be responding to current trends.

Importantly, pull marketing means you can deliver products and value in weeks rather than months. And the faster you can deliver value to customers, the sooner you’ll have valuable feedback to learn from.

One of the reasons why TikTok, Instagram, and even YouTube marketing is so successful is because of the pull format. They use short videos that are catchy and quick and easy to produce with minimal resources. In turn, you can respond to trends far quicker and pull in potential customers, often without them even realizing.

Seek Perfection

Delivering a success plan takes consistency. Generally, it also takes time, but this is what lean marketing aims to avoid. So, the main goal is to fast track your marketing efforts using data and analysis.

To do this, you need to set up a marketing system that delivers principles 1-4 and collects data the whole time. This is what you use to define your metrics, which in turn allow you to create a success plan. Although lean marketing isn’t always an easy transition, you should notice the benefits fairly quickly once you’ve established a system.

How to Use Textr Team in Omni-Channel and Small Business Marketing

When utilizing omni-channel marketing, it’s easy to overlook the potential of SMS and MMS marketing campaigns. Text messages are quick, easy and cheap to send, and have high open and response rates. As such, they’re basically perfect for a lean marketing campaign.

Although email campaign is one of the most common tools in outbound marketing, there are industries that you just won’t able to reach through emailing, for example, automotive, spas and other small local businesses. Likewise, it is also inefficient to do cold calling if you business do not have the resources and sales team to do so. 

Textr Team is design to make SMS and MMS marketing campaigns simple for businesses. You can set up multiple phone numbers in the app, which allows you to centralize all your marketing efforts in one place. Having different phone numbers connects your whole marketing team and your clients globally.

Better yet, Textr Team allows you to optimize the texting process and quickly send out mobile marketing campaigns. This makes it ideal for pull marketing efforts, as you can respond to changing trends whenever needed.

Bulk-sending SMS and MMS messages on Textr Team is a cost-effective way to reach and engage with your target audience. Provided you have their mobile numbers, much of the process of identifying your audience has already been done. As such, it means you can maximize your marketing budget while still directly reaching your audience.

 H ere are the steps for setting up a lean marketing campaign using text messages on Textr Team:

1. 
   

   Identify a target audience that you clearly understand in terms of their demands and pain points. Obtain phone numbers from internal or external resources and tag them accordingly in the app. For example, you might have a group that you believe will respond better to a sale than others.

2. Click the Text tab in the app and select the New SMS Campaign option. Then, write a concise and engaging message that comes to less than 100 characters. Make sure your message is clear and contains 1 to 2 CTA, Click To Action. Don’t overload your message! 

3. Automate the campaign and send it to your tagged customer group. Like posting on social media, it is important to try out blasting your campaign in different time of day. For example, traffic on Linkedin is highest between Tuesday to Thursday. Choose a time when your targets aren’t busy!

4. Wait for customer feedback and engage with your audience if they reply. It is rarely, people will rely to your message; however, if you put your website’s link in the message and check the click rate through Google Analytics, you can track the location and session events, which give you further customer insight.  

5. Review your campaign’s performance. You can use data collected by the Textr Team app to optimize your message. For example, you can change keywords and type of content. Finally, use your campaign on another target audience using the updated information.

 This process is easy, simple and quick to 

To get started, click HERE, where you can find out more information about the basic steps involved in using Textr Team. You can also find out more information about pricing HERE.

Getting Started with Textr Team

Textr Team can help you get started with your lean marketing campaign. Our 7 days free trial offers almost unlimited calls and messaging, 1500 minutes calls and 1500 SMS/ MMS messages to be exact. As a VoIP, Voice over Internet Protocol, provider, Textr Team provides you a 7 days free virtual phone number once you sign up. You can free to use all available features in our product with no set up nor hidden fees. Once the free trial is over, you will need to top up to keep the provided number. 

Download it today to find out how it can be used as part of your omni-channel salesforce.