It's Not That Complicated

If you offer a service or sell a product, you’d better be sure your potential customers know what it is. More importantly, they need to know what it does for them, but almost as important is to keep your offer simple.

One of the problems many new business people (and some long-established ones) suffer from is lack of focus. Not a lack of focus on building their business, but more often a lack of clarity about what that business is. Too many set themselves such a wide remit, scared of missing out on a job they could do, that no one actually knows what they’re best at.

When we talk to people, individually or in a crowd, they will often only remember one or two key things we say. So when we’re promoting our business, we’d better be sure those one or two things are the things our business is based upon: the benefits we can offer our customers. Trying to be all things to all people means too many people won’t have a clue what we offer, and there’s a danger we’ll come across as experts at nothing in particular.

Bigger companies tend to be better at this. Even if the company has a hundred products and services, they often promote each of those as a brand, or divide them into groups under a series of ‘umbrella’ brand names. But look at it this way: consumers buying a Mars bar don’t even care that the Mars Corporation makes Snickers and Bountys as well, and the Mars Corporation rarely bothers to remind us, because it doesn’t matter to a Mars bar buyer.

Likewise, if you’re trying to sell me a specific product, telling me you can also offer something else, even something quite similar, is just a distraction. Telling me about another half dozen products you also offer will just bury your original message under a pile of irrelevance. Things might be different after I’ve bought your first product, but sell me a watch first, for example, then show me the rings…

Most business is simple: we provide a product or a service to someone who wants it. Making the process more complicated just makes it more confusing, and confused customers rarely buy.

Roy

The Devil IS in the Detail

Hello again.

The problem with detail is that most of us find it a lot easier to speak in great detail than we do to hear and absorb it.

Which is why some of the most knowledgeable people on a subject - any subject - can also be the least interesting to a lay audience. Detail, of course, is a matter of context. For example, if you're speaking to a room full of fellow experts or in a one-to-one with a peer, detail and in-depth discussion is the order of the day. In those situations, generalities and simplifications won't do.

But if you're trying to get new ideas and facts across to someone, or a group of people, you must take into account their ability to absorb, digest and remember new ideas is a lot less than your ability to tell them.

How does this apply to marketing?

Well, while you may be in love with your product or service and all its wonderful and ingenious features, your prospective customer probably only has room for two or three concepts at most.

Number one will always be 'What's in it for me'?

Numbers two and three might be 'Where's the proof'? and 'How much'?

But explaining exactly how you're going to deliver on your promises is giving too much detail and is usually more interesting to you than it is to them. If they want to know the answer to that one it will be because your 'proof' is unconvincing. So answer the 'How'? question with that in mind.

But start with the number one benefit and how that solves their problem. That's usually the only 'how' most people really care about.

Roy

PS. See The Complete Marketing Manual at http://www.completemarketingmanual.com/

PPS. See how public speaking could bring you a six-figure income at Niche Seminar Secrets