Marketing - It's All About Them, Not You

Marketing - It's All About Them, Not You

What would your target audience value about your product or service that is unique – a quality that cannot be easily reproduced? Source: Death of a Small Business: Five Threats to the Growth and Success of American Small Business

Earlier, I touched on the importance of target marketing. This time, I'd like to go one step further by addressing benefits and features and how they relate to your target marketing efforts.

Do you know why your clients come to you rather than one of your competitors? They come to you because they realize some sort of benefit from doing business with you. A benefit could be the quality of your service or product, but it also could be your pricing, customer service or office hours. It's important to identify what your existing clients view as the benefit(s) of doing business with you because it can help you in marketing your services or products to new clients.

Many times, I see businesses marketing their features instead of their benefits. A feature is something that's important, but it's more important to the business than it is to the consumer. For instance, a business may promote the fact that it has state-of-the-art machinery, but the real benefit that customers gain from using that business is fast service. So, the marketing message should focus on fast service, not state-of-the-art machinery. Most consumers don't care how they get the fast service, they just care that they get it!

If you don't know what benefits you offer your clients, it's time to find out. Knowing this important information will not only help your marketing strategy, but it also will help strengthen your relationship with existing clients.

Please contact me to have Solid Oak Consulting help you identify your benefits and improve your marketing strategies.

Tom Long telong@solidoakconsulting.com, 708-524-0886.