Make Your Marketing Solve a Problem
You may be engaged in marketing activities that are working against you. Or, at the very least, are making sales more difficult. It’s a common problem - marketing that focuses on what your company can DO and what your company KNOWS and how much experience you HAVE.
Surprise! This doesn’t work.
Instead of focusing on YOU, market yourself as an innovative problem solver. You’ll be pleasantly surprised at how easily this approach attracts new customers. Emphasize how your service or problem fixes their nagging issue, pain, or dilemma.
It doesn’t matter what you offer as long as you keep some basic principles in mind:
1. Self Interest: People (you and me included) want to know what is in it for them. They are interested in useful ideas, services, and products that make something better in their life. Don’t talk about YOU. Start talking about THEM.
2. Comfort: People do business with people they know and trust. Start a “conversation” with people by giving them articles, newsletters, or other information that you have created to HELP them. This also allows them to learn more about the way you think and your capabilities
3. Generate Interest: Are you effectively communicating the one thing that makes you unique? What can you offer that no other business can? In one sentence, describe it. This is your Core Marketing Message. Use it over and over to generate interest and get people talking about you.
4. Communication:To have a good relationship, you have to stay in touch. Whether it’s family, friends, or leads, this principle is exactly the same. And when prospects are ready to buy, you want them to know YOU provide the best solution. Keep communicating through phone calls, e-mails, lunch dates, and so on.
ACTION ITEM: Are you offering a solution to a problem? Are you communicating regularly? Do you know your core marketing message? Focus on THEM to easily generate more sales and greater revenue.
Hugs, Wendy Maynard
Your friendly marketing maven
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on July 14th, 2005 at 9:44 am
Connect The Dots In Your Marketing
Wendy at Kinetic Ideas offers a simple, yet powerful suggestion for developing marketing resources:
on August 2nd, 2005 at 11:54 pm
This is actually an interesting thing that I quantified the other day. I was consulting for a website where the owner wanted to just put pictures of his new building and his new equipment on the front page. , it had nothing to do with his company at all other than basking in his own glory. His potential customers didn’t care about that.
Another example is small businesses that put their phone number in their logo on all of their material. These are mostly small service oriented businesses. Their idealogy is that when they think of their business they think of the phone because that’s where they talk to clients so that must be what their business is about, a phone.
It’s very difficult for some people to stand outside of what they focus on in their business and think about what their customers want from their business.
on August 6th, 2005 at 12:09 am
Business Mistakes On The Web
While working on or consulting for smaller companies that are trying to create new web sites I see one mistake over and over. It isn’t a flaw in design, or even a flaw in usability. It is a business flaw that affects many smaller entities.
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on February 25th, 2007 at 4:33 pm
[...] Wendy at Kinetic Ideas offers a simple, yet powerful suggestion for developing marketing resources: make your marketing solve a problem. Simple, right? Then why do most association brochures present a general litany of here’s who we are, here’s our benefits, here’s what we’re doing, blah, blah. Even most association websites are self-centered vehicles for announcing blah stuff about the organization. In short, it’s all about the association and hardly ever about the person actually holding the brochure or reading the ad or browsing the site. [...]