MARKETING EXPOSED

It’s the bane of marketing and advertising.  It’s the reason so many are so turned off by advertising.

If everything is “on sale”, then nothing really is.  If everybody says they have “the best service”, then nobody really does.  How can your store be “conveniently located” when you don’t know where everybody lives?  On and on.

Stop already!  Stop littering your marketing messages with meaningless ways to try to claim how you’re the “best” or “great” or “professional” or “big” or “friendly”.  Instead, simply tell me how you’re different.  And, most importantly, what that means to ME!  From my point of view.

Today you have so many options to clearly communicate and paint a unique identity.   The traditional mass media allows you to push messages out to a mass audience, while the online world allows you to interactively communicate directly to people one on one.

In tennis, when a player is said to “push” the ball, she’s simply just trying to push it back over the net and keep it in play.  It’s quite safe.  But very defensive and usually ineffectual. 

Taking a full swing, on the other hand, means hitting the ball with purpose and perhaps some power.  With that comes a much greater risk/reward ratio.  For anyone but the pros, taking the big swing results in hitting more out.  But it also results in more proactive opportunities to win the point, as opposed to the push which relies on the hope that the other side might mess up and lose the point.

Are you just “pushing” your messages out there in the traditional mass media safely and easily – which is also to say, ineffectually?  Or are you willing to take a full swing by being extremely specific, aiming communications with bold purposeful intent making a clear statement about what’s in it for your customers?  Doing so gives you a message far more likely to stick and resonate with people, even though there will be a risk that in some cases it might be the wrong specific for certain prospects or situations.  Take the big swing!

Marketing on line begins at the door of your website.  It’s a wonderful place for an existing customer or a potential one to interactively get useful information about your business.  “USEFUL” being the operative word.

Specifics are just as critically important on your website.  There is nothing more maddening then going to a website and finding a page with bullet points regurgitating those cliches again about “great service”, “best prices”, and your “friendly staff”.  You might as well put bullet points that just say “Yada Yada”.  Because, like the running joke on Seinfeld, you’ve got a site about nothing.

There is a line of thought among some that it’s better to be vague so that a prospect has to at least call.  That way you eliminate the risk that a specific direct piece of information on your site might be the wrong answer for him.  That doesn’t account for the number of prospects frustrated by your obvious and shallow approach who are chased away from the idea of doing business with you for good.

Make it easy.  Make it relevant.  That’s what sticks with people.  And instills a sense of trust.  Which is far more likely to pay bigger dividends over the long haul!

And the seeds of trust you plant in this manner can be much more deeply rooted by taking charge of social marketing, whether it’s by writing useful and helpful blog posts, or setting up a Facebook Fan Page, or getting going on the new rage that is Twitter.  Future posts here will delve more specifically into how to use these social marketing tools.

The bottom line: Stop claiming to be “the best”.  Instead, keep the focus specifically on how you’re different.  And, most importantly, exactly why that difference should matter to me.

What do you think?

- Steve