“If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself.” – Albert Einstein
There I was…
A deer in head lights…
Everything rested on my next decision…
All eyes on me…
What am I going to do?
How do I answer that question?
I’m not prepared…
I’m not ready for this…
“I’ll just have a glass of water, thank you.”
Ever go to one of those restaurants with a menu the size of War & Peace? Did you even know that many appetizers existed? Can you really prepare an egg that many ways?
How about standing in an aisle, looking at the latest widget that just hit the market? It offers twenty five color ways, ten different models, and five different bundles. So many features, so many functions – SO MANY CHOICES! “I’m outta here!”
Just like when the waiter asks “And, for you sir?” You settle for water because you just can’t decide. Can you relate to that feeling? There are so many choices that it’s easier to just walk away.
The most important thing to remember about marketing is that the goal is to HELP our customers UNDERSTAND who we our, what we OFFER and how it solves their problem. Not confuse them.
This piece is a quick, cursory view at this issue. Enjoy the brevity of this one because I can tend go into greater, sometimes ranting depth into various marketing concepts. I have held out for other articles.
This is a quick, rule of thumb type test all marketers, business owners, entrepreneurs, and others in the industry should utilize, especially when starting out or launching new products/services. People like options, but people do not like making choices. They like the feeling of having control and that they made a choice, but really, they want the choices made for them. The key is to make the options simple, so the customer has an easy choice yet the feeling of control.
Too many options create confusion which can then lead to inaction. In the business world that means no sale! Trust me, I share from personal experience. My first business was a clothing company that tried to create too much too soon. We had too much inventory, too many styles, in too many colors, and no unique selling proposition. We couldn’t even explain who we were, what we did or what we were about. If we even had an elevator pitch, it would take a ride to to the to of a high rise to deliver it. It overwhelmed our prospects and over leveraged our books!
The moral is to start simple. So, let’s take a quick look at each of those capitalized words above.
HELP:
Confusion is no help to anyone. Everyone loses. We lose money on our marketing expenditures. We lose potential customers and profits. Prospects lose a potential solution to their problem– they lose the value we could have provided. We all lose the time the whole ordeal consumed; The time to create the product and marketing message and the time the prospect spent trying to figure what the heck our product is and does.
Our job is to serve our customers. Whether we sell a product or a service, we are in the service business. How can I/we best serve our customer? That question should always be top of mind. Ask it when designing products, packaging, ad copy, promotions, manuals, everything.
UNDERSTAND:
How do we help our prospects and customers understand what we offer and how it adds value to their life? How does our product or service solve a frustration or problem they have? Be clear, be specific, be direct, BE CONCISE. You only need to communicate three things – what? why? how?
What is the product?
Why they need the product?
How they get the product?
A prospect needs to be able to clearly ask and answer these questions if they are going to buy. You, the marketer, need to ask yourself the three “whats” and be able to clearly and concisely answer them.
1. What is our product?
2. What does it do for them?
3. What they have to do to get?
This is assuming, of course, you have already done your preliminary due diligence work! Market research, creating a product that solves a problem, etc…
Create and tailor your marketing efforts with these questions mind. Once you have something ready to go – review it by confirming tat you can answer the questions. Then put it to the test. WAIT! I don’t mean put in on the retail shelf yet. Let at least three people unfamiliar with the product test it out. Can they easily answer the what, why and how?
Great – good to go!
OFFER:
The offer must communicate two things to even qualify.
1. What the product is.
2. The value of the product.
I’m not talking sticker price here. A prospect needs to understand what the products is and why they should exchange their hard earned money for it. If you don’t a have product and a perceived value, there is no offer. The official term for the traditionalists out there is value proposition. A prospect wants to know the that value of what they are going to receive, if they choose to buy, is of equal or greater value than the money they have to exchange for it.
Again, this is super basic because marketing should be. We, the marketer, have a wonderful knack of over complicating things. Keep it simple and run through these quick and easy “acid tests” before you get in to deep with your new product, business, or campaign.
Talk Soon,
Kevin W @LEAP272
Owner-Operator
You have to leap if you want to live
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