Simple Steps to Effective Marketing
A
favorite adage of my college journalism professor was this: "Assume
the reader knows nothing, but don't assume the reader is stupid." In other
words, deconstruct the complex to make it easily understood, but don't dumb it
down. In my years since school, I've realized the wisdom of that approach
applies not just to journalism, but to business
and marketing,
too.
Products and services (especially
digital ones) can be complex. Your job as a marketer is, in part, to make the seemingly
impenetrable easily understood, to lose the corporate Frankenspeak and convey
your business's value in human, accessible terms.
Businesses that develop buyer
personas for their products or services exemplify the "keep it
simple" mantra. A buyer persona is a representation of the type of
consumer you believe will be interested in what your company is selling. The
idea is to address customers' wants and needs directly--speaking to their
specific pain points from their specific points of view. More broadly, it can
be handy to envision intended prospects as people who--like my college
prof--demand clarity and simplicity. This will help you to market effectively.
Here's a checklist of how to keep it
simple, without getting stupid.
Speak your customer's language. Former West German Chancellor Willy Brandt once said,
"If I am selling to you, I speak your language. If I am buying, dann
müssen Sie Deutsch sprechen [then you must speak German]."
How do your customers describe your
products? What words do they use? Be sure to use the same ones. You might refer
to your online educational program as "professional services
development," but if your prospects are searching for "training"
or "virtual seminars," they won't be able to find you.
If you can't directly survey the
people you are trying to reach, you can gain insight into their language
online: Read the same publications or blogs they do; listen in on conversations
on Facebook,
Twitter
or LinkedIn;
and use keyword research tools (like Google AdWords or Keyword Discovery) to
see exactly what terms people are using in searches.
Solve problems. Consider the world from your prospects' point of view: How
does what you sell improve their lives? Shoulder their burdens? Ease their
pain?
Remember, your value is not in what
you do--your value is in what you do for others. So, don't just talk about your
product's features; rather, talk about what those features can accomplish for
your customers. That seems simple enough. (In fact, it's marketing 101.) But
for entrepreneurs who live and breathe their businesses, it can be tricky to
view the world via a customer-centric perspective.
Simon Sinek, author of Start With
Why, preaches that people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it. So
consider how that perspective might alter your explanation of your goods. For
example, at MarketingProfs, what we sell is marketing training and knowledge.
But why we sell it is to empower marketers to grow efficiently and effectively,
to do their jobs better and advance their careers.
Make the customer the hero of your
story. The best marketing has a human
element to it. Your customers are people, which means they will relate better
to your story if it's somehow about them. Said another way: The more you align
yourself with your customers, the more likely you will be to win their hearts
(and their business!). Even if you sell something mundane (e.g., toasters) or
seemingly intangible (e.g., back-end technology), put the focus on how it can
touch people's lives.
Anticipate needs. Higher-ticket purchases can have a very long sales
journey--sometimes as long as 18 to 24 months. In such a scenario, your buyer
may already be 50 to 85 percent of the way toward a decision when he or she
gets in touch with a sales rep, according to some estimates. That means you'll
want to anticipate his or her questions and answer them ahead of time, through
the content you create (blog posts, FAQs, e-books, white papers, etc.).
Create marketing content that is
honest, empathetic to the needs and wants of customers and seeded with utility.
Your marketing content is on the front lines, playing the role a sales rep
might have played in the pre-digital era.
So give these rules a go, because
doing so can help you market more effectively, which calls to mind another
fundamental rule of journalism, and of marketing, and perhaps of life itself:
"No one will complain because you made something too easy to
understand."
By
Ann Handley | Entrepreneur
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/simple-steps-effective-marketing-170000189.html
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