Three Resolutions to Make Your New Year More Profitable
by Joel N. Sussman
A successful small business marketer is a cross between an
eternal optimist and a hard-nosed realist. If you don't cultivate
optimism, your efforts will be sporadic, half-hearted, and
uncreative.
On the other hand, if you look at the world only through
"rose-colored glasses", you may develop a false sense of
confidence and plunge blindly into an expensive media blitz,
bypassing the necessary planning and evaluation. While optimism
is an essential state of mind for pursuing any goal, it needs to
be tempered with a dose of realism.
Sometimes a company's worst enemy can be self-defeating
attitudes. You know it's time to regroup and re-examine attitudes
and your creative process when you hear yourself or one of your
associates saying, "I didn't think that ad would work, anyway!"
Does that sound familiar? If you ever have serious reservations
about an ad, a marketing campaign, or a sales presentation, then
it's time to step back, re-evaluate it, and get some outside
feedback before launching it.
Resolution #1: Get a Second Opinion
Run the concept, the graphics, or the sales message by some
associates, a couple friends, or even family members who are
willing to offer some constructive criticism. Ask them what their
immediate reaction is and why the sales message is or is not
persuasive. Do they think it would compel them to take action if
they were prospective customers, or does it just blend in with
the hundreds of other marketing messages they're exposed to day
after day? Finding a way to stand out and be noticed is often the
first hurdle in a successful advertising or marketing campaign.
A more formal approach would be to assemble a focus group,
usually members of the public who are paid a fee to view your
commercial, evaluate your product, or critique your marketing
material. The most effective way to conduct a focus group is
generally to hire an experienced advertising agency or marketing
research company to do it for you. They should know how to guide
discussions in a productive direction and ask questions that
elicit unbiased, honest, and useful responses.
If you've invested a lot of your time and thought into creating
an ad, a sales presentation, or even the packaging for a product,
your closeness to the campaign can make it difficult to put
yourself into the customers' shoes. By getting too caught up in
the creative process, the pressures of sales quotas, or your own
ego, it's easy to lose your objectivity. That's when outside
feedback can be really helpful and necessary.
Resolution #2: Get In Touch With Your Inner Customer
The easiest and most natural way to start thinking like a
customer is to get in the habit of paying attention to and
analyzing your own experiences as a customer. Whether you're in a
restaurant, a dry cleaners, or a repair shop, make a mental note
of the things that rub you the wrong way or that make you want to
continue doing business there. The same holds true of your
reaction to print ads, commercials, billboards, yellow pages ads,
or sales pitches. What is it about some of the marketing messages
you hear or see that motivate you to pick up the phone, get in
your car, write a check, pull out your credit card, or choose one
business over another? Give some thought to why you keep going
back to the same coffee shop, chiropractor, mechanic, bank, or
hair stylist. If you can figure out why they've earned your
loyalty, that might shed some light on how you can improve your
own company's ability to attract, acquire, and retain customers.
But before you can build on your strengths, you need to identify
exactly what they are. You and just about everyone in your
organization needs to know what your unique, distinctive customer
advantages are and why customers are better off doing business
with your company rather than your competitors. Stop and write
down all the strong selling points that can be used in
presentations, brochures, ads, business cards, sales letters, and
web pages. Then figure out what changes, improvements, and
enhancements need to be made to your service quality, your
marketing strategy, and that list of advantages to make it more
compelling.
Resolution #3: Shift Your Focus From "Features" to "Benefits"
Now here comes the hard part! I'm no psychologist, but it seems
like the biggest obstacle that business owners face in giving
effective sales presentations and creating response-producing ads
and letters is their own ego. Make one change in your attitude
and you're almost sure to increase your sales closing ratio and
your advertising response rate. The secret, which you and just
about everyone else in business has heard of but may not have
acted on, is to focus your marketing message on "benefits" rather
than "features". In other words, customers are more strongly
persuaded by knowing how a product is going to benefit them,
rather than what it's made of. That doesn't mean you should leave
out the descriptive features of your product or service; but, in
most cases, the main thrust of your presentation or ad should be
the benefits your customer will enjoy. More specifically, focus
on your ability to solve their problem, make their lives easier,
or help them feel happier, have more fun, be more confident,
enjoy better health, or increase their family's safety.
They may also be in the market for a product or service that
makes them more financially secure, personally admired or loved,
more attractive, prosperous, prestigious, comfortable, or pain
free. People have dozens of fundamental needs and emotional
triggers, and are motivated by everything from fear and greed to
love and vanity. If possible, find out exactly what your
prospects' "hot buttons" are, and then tailor your presentation,
ad, or web page to those needs. If you can reach them at an
emotional level or otherwise convince them that you can satisfy
their needs or solve their problem better than the competition,
then the probability of gaining their business and winning them
over as a loyal client will increase tremendously. Do that
consistently, and you'll have a winning formula for small
business marketing success.
*****************
Joel Sussman, , president of Optimal Marketing Communications, has
created a web site, called "Marketing Survival Kit.com"( visit the site below ).The site features a variety
of hand-picked articles, small business marketing tools, and
downloadable manuals. A free subscription to his marketing
newsletter is available by sending a blank email to:
marketingsurvivalkit@GO-Subscribe.com, or go to: http://www.marketingsurvivalkit.com
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