| |
| |
|
Marketing Information |
|
|
|
Your Marketing Message
Your message is first among your weapons in the battle of perceptions. Your message allows you to accomplish many things. Your message can educate the masses, convert the non-believers or separate the wheat from the chaff. But not all three. Your first clue to your message comes from where in the Awareness Scale? your target sits. (See my article titled "Target Your Market" for further discussion on the Awareness Scale?) The Educational Target The Educational Target needs the benefits of your type of service/product fully and carefully explained. Don't spend time differentiating your company from your competition, there isn't any. Instead, your target must have their awareness raised until they care. The Doubter Target The Doubter Target needs to have their objections overcome. You still must present the general benefits, but concentrate on overcoming the fears revealed in your research. Show how you deliver these benefits better than your competition. Your materials have a greater fight for attention here. The Differentiation Target The Differentiation Target is the most obvious target. All your competition is there. This market is already buying your type of service/product and they know what the major benefits are. You must highlight how you deliver the major benefits better than the competition. How you have other, less obvious benefits, your competitors don't. You must really stand out in this crowd. To be noticed, your materials and approach must be unique. As you can see, each target needs a different message. Don't make the mistake of trying to combine the messages in one approach. It won't work. Bad marketing happens to good people because they can't believe others are blind to their goodness. Marketing is a battle of perceptions, not products. Objective reality doesn't exist. What people believe about you and your product is what's real. This is tough for most people to come to grips with. Creating a positive impression is not saying you are wonderful. It's proving it. Marketing works when it demonstrates, not when it asserts. Don't explain the tools of your trade and don't list the features. Go for the benefits. Make them clear and desirable. If your target has to figure out the benefits for themselves, you're asking them to do your job for you. They won't. They'll do something else. The loss is yours. For marketing purposes, each feature must deliver a benefit. Otherwise, it's worthless. Write out all the benefits of your product/service. Pretend you are a prospect. For each benefit statement you write, ask yourself, "So what?" If your answer to "So what?" is more explanation, your statement is not yet a benefit. Example: Client says: "Our car has passenger-side air bags." We reply: "So what? This is a feature." Client: "Our air bags inflate in 1/1000 of a second and can withstand 24 G forces." Us: "So what? This is still a feature." Client: "The passenger can walk away from a head-on collision." Us: "Now that's a benefit." Keith Thirgood, Creative Director Capstone Communications Group Helping businesses get more business through innovative marketing http://www.capstonecomm.com Markham, Ontario, Canada 905-472-2330 Subscribe to Thrive-on-line http://list.capstonecomm.com/mail.cgi?f=list&l=thrive_on_line
MORE RESOURCES:
Google News |
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
How to Profit from Your Expertise (Part 1 of 2) Are you looking for a natural way to market your professional services? What if you could exponentially multiply the number of motivated, pre-qualified prospects you reach in a fraction of the time that networking and referrals require?Now what if you could be the person in a crowed room with whom everyone wants to talk about your services? And no, they don't want to sell you something?they want to buy what you've got.Too good to be true? Not if you know how to leverage the knowledge you get paid for every day as a professional service provider. Maximizing Your Yellow Page Investment Yellow Page users are the hottest of all prospects - someone who has made the decision to buy, and now is looking for a place to do it. Does your ad convince them that your business is that place?It doesn't have to be the biggest, although that can certainly help. Loan Officer Marketing - How to Target the Right Agents Once there was a loan officer, who marketed his services to some Realtors®. His story went something like this. Logo Facts What makes one logo better than another?Simplicity.A good logo works in the simplest form. Marketing Apathy Solutions: 10 Solutions for Overcoming Apathy Beginning Today Are you suffering from feelings of indifference or a lack of concern when it comes to marketing your business? Do you lack the passion that's necessary to attract customers to your business?Marketing apathy, characterized by feelings of passiveness, disregard, and a lack of interest is widespread among today's businesses. This attitude is like putting a roadblock between you and your success. Financial Services Marketing Insights: A Marketing Compass What we now call "marketing" began long before the name was coined. In the mid-1800s, traveling salesmen dressed "snake oil" and other tonics in fancy packaging and extolled their virtues to a gullible public. Loan Officer Websites: Your Marketing Hub to Magnetize Realtors Too many loan officer websites look like congested intersections, information running every which way. Fancy gadgets, like calculators, online application submission forms and loan programs filled with jargon that customers don't understand. Second Dose Of Marketing Vitamins Organizations often get stuck in neutral when it comes to marketing. Sometimes, you just need a kickstart. A Look at Color Brochure Printing Brochures have become vital in today's workplace, serving a wide variety of purposes. Some are quite complex and others are simpler; color brochure printing is one of the simpler options. Using Flyers In Your Business If you are not using flyers in your business you are missing out. Flyers can be used to sell your product, promote your product, promote your services, and in a number of other areas. How Much Is Your Popcorn Worth? Powerful Lessons In Marketing & The Psychology Of Selling - Part 3 To read the beginning of this special report, you can read part two here: http://ezinearticles.com/?id=58712Let's continue to discuss the various marketing principles that are involved in "popcorn marketing":2. 8 Proven Ways to Get Referrals Do you find it hard to ask for referrals? I know I do! Your heart starts racing, you stumble for words, and sometimes you break out in a sweat just thinking of asking for a referral. But the secret to getting referrals without having to ask is to develop a system that does the asking for you. Are You Attracting or Repelling Prospects? There are basically two ways in which you can either attract or repel prospects. I call these Attraction Marketing and Repel Marketing. Todays Definition of Marketing. Has It Changed? With the continued proliferation of the Internet, the meaning of the word "marketing" also seems to proliferate. Cyberspace has opened up a whole arena of new marketing technologies, techniques, and twists. After Your Postcard Mailing: Follow Up with Finesse I've heard a lot of people lament the fact that they just sent out a big postcard mailing, and, alas, no one called. Hey, it's happened to me. How To Let Your Customers Search For YOU! - Part 2 First I want to welcome you to part two of the article 'How To Let Customers Search for YOU!', where you can learn how to attract new clients at any time you want. The techniques I describe here have proofed to work for me and a lot of other people. CD ROM Business Cards - Offline Marketing For Online Promotion It's a great concept, - and it has a 'cool factor' of 300%!Many people will pop these into their drive just because of image appeal alone. What's really neat is when one is so well done, so informative, so interactive, that everybody wants one. Top 7 Ways to Get Your Products in the Hands of Celebrities Celebrities are the tastemakers that drive brand awareness and usage. Celebrities drive the direction of trends. Translation and Your International E-Commerce Strategy Most businesses realize that they are simply a click away from any corner of the globe. Well, actually two if you include the Yahoo! search a potential customer does to access your shopping cart. The Art Of Writing Classified Ads The writing of good classified ads truly is an art that needs to be learned and perfected. Depending on the type of business you run, the development of a good classified ad can boost your annual sales by an average of £5,000 to £20,000 or more.
|
| home | site map |
| © 2006 |
