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Your Marketing Message:
It Ain't About You
Avoid the mistake
focusing attention on yourself
and not your prospect or client
Who is your marketing conversation
shining on?
By Coach Ron
On
a very basic level, there are five ingredients in a
successful marketing process:
1. You, the
marketer.
2. A qualified prospect.
3. A need or want that the prospect has.
4. Your product or service.
5. Your marketing message that guides the prospect through a process
that leads to a sale.
While many
small business owners would say they focus their marketing message on
the prospect, their advertising often contradicts them. In the end,
most ends up being an exercise in satisfying the ego of the owner.
This is a fatal mistake that wastes time, money and opportunity.
You’ve seen theses headlines before ---
“Our Company Has Been in Business 25 years.”
“We Have the Best Service in Town.”
“We are a Family Run Business.”
Look at the
first word that begins each statement above. They all focus the
attention on the marketer and not on the prospect. The prospect only
wants to know what your product or service can do to help them
overcome their problem, challenge or need. They don’t care about you
and what matters to you!
Creating a
marketing message that is self-centered and vain is the biggest
roadblock to successful small business marketing. To often the small
business owner is mistakenly influenced by the examples of advertising
they see in the marketplace. They attempt to copy the style and
approach of large, multi-million dollar advertisers like Coke and
Apple. They erroneously believe that the cute and clever image
advertising these companies use will also work for them too.
Image
advertising does not sell! It only leaves an favorable impression that
can only slightly affect the decision making process. To work, image
advertising requires frequent exposure to a message over a long period
of time in expensive media. Just think of how many Apple commercials
and ads you see in a week. As a small business owner, this kind of
exposure costs way too much and would be too risky for you to
employee.
You just
don’t have the resources to invest in expensive, cute advertising;
your financial future is at stake! Direct response marketing that
focuses on the prospect and the key benefits of your product is a much
better use of your time and money.
Direct
response marketing is similar to carrying on a personal conversation
with the prospect. Have you ever had a conversation with someone who
talked only about themselves? It’s not a pleasant experience is it?
But that’s what happens when you make the marketing message about you
and how great your product and service is.
To successful
utilize direct response marketing, you must consciously avoid the
egomaniacal personal pronouns that makes the conversation about you –
“I, me, mine, my, our, we, and us.” Instead, make empathy your most
powerful weapon and use the sweeter sounding second person pronouns of
“you” and “yours.”
These second
person pronouns are naturally effective because they shine the
conversation spotlight on prospect’s problems and needs. Your will be
talking about what is important to them. This tact allows you to
present your solution by communicating the benefits of your product or
service. And when done correctly, it connects with them emotionally,
taps into their desire to improve their condition and gives you a
better opportunity to reach a sale.
Remember to
always check you ego at the door when developing your marketing
message and be the empathetic solver of their problems.
Coach Ron's Recommended Resources:
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