Let me ask you a quick question – you don’t need to take too long thinking about your answer – just run with whatever pops into your head first.
After you’ve read the question, and you’ve come up with your answer, I’m going to give you what I think might be a slightly different answer.
Now obviously I don’t know you, and can’t be sure that my answer will actually be much different to yours – all I’m going on here are answers given to me in the past by clients and customers when I’ve hit them with this same question.
O.K…are you ready? Here it is…
What Is Marketing?
I know…pretty tough question right?
But let me ask you this…did you get an answer in your head straight away or did you need to stop and think for a second and try and work out some sort of definition?
It’s surprising how many times this question stumps people.
It’s not really a black and white question – everyone has their own different slant on what marketing means to them.
So what I’m going to give you now is one of my definitions.
And I say ‘one of’ because like everyone else I can come up with slightly different variations from time to time depending on what I’ve had for breakfast
But I had eggs this morning so here’s the definition I came up with:
“Marketing is the process of identifying who your ideal customer is, doing everything you can to understand the motivations and desires of that ideal customer, and then designing a plan to take this information and use the approprate tools and techniques to convince them that you’re offering exactly what they’re looking for.”
Dan Kennedy, a well known marketing consultant has a similar, and slightly more compact version
“Put the right message in front of the right person via the right medium”
You’ll notice in both of these definitions that there is an emphasis on the customer (ideal customer/right person), and this is really what good marketing is all about.
Not everyone is interested in what you have to offer – if you can identify and understand your ideal customers, marketing to them will simply be a matter of showing them that you understand what it is they’re looking for, and then convining them that no one else can deliver it like you can.
Use This Simple Technique To Create Powerful Marketing Messages
So how can you use this information to your advantage?
Well there is one powerful technique that you can use which can help you create powerful, compelling marketing messages without really needing any voodoo persuasion skills.
Here’s how it works.
Sit down and think about some of your past customers who you’ve had exceptionally good experiences with.
What you want to try and do is start thinking about the things that these particular clients and customers had in common i.e why were they such a good client?
You may need to dig a little bit, but you’ll eventually be able to come up with some reasons why those clients were such a good fit for you and your business.
Creating Your Customer Avatar
Once you’ve worked this out, your next job is to create an ‘avatar’ (not the tall, green kind) – this is kind of like an imaginary person that you create who represents who your ideal client would be.
You take the best traits from the best clients that you’ve ever worked with and you create a representation of all these people.
Now sometimes you’ll have had a client who you thought was perfect in every way, and if this is the case you can actually use that person as your avatar.
So why are we doing this?
Well, once you’ve got this avatar in your mind, you’re going to think about this person every time you go to create any sort of marketing promotion.
You want to write your promotion as if you were writing it specifically for this avatar and this avatar alone as opposed to writing in for anyone who might read or see it.
You see the most powerful marketing messages are always the ones that people feel were written specifically for them, and using this process helps you write these messages in such a way that they feel more personal to your ideal prospects and have a greater impact.
Now what you will find once you start writing in this way is that there will actually be more people who are kind of repelled by your marketing. They’ll feel that you just don’t offer what they’re looking for.
And that’s fine – in fact it’s exactly what you want, because on the other side of the coin you’ll have people who feel like you wrote your promotion for them and them alone, and they’ll find it hard to resist whatever it is you’re offering
You see good marketing is never indifferent – it attracts exactly the sort of people you want it to attract and does nothing for (and even repels) everyone else. It weeds out the bad prospects and sends you only the most qualified people who are a good fit for you and your business.
Over time as you get better at this process, you’ll end up working only with the people you want to, and can avoid the pain in the ass clients that we all know only too well.
So here’s your job for today, and in fact for 2011.
You want to move your business towards a situation where you’re working more and more with clients that make your working life enjoyable.
You do this by identifying the common traits these clients possess, and then creating promotions that this group of people find hard to resist, while at the same time ‘pushing away’ other groups of people who aren’t a part of that ideal target market.
Now I understand that all sounds well and good but you might need a few ideas about how you can put it into practice.
So I’ve got another article on the way which will get into some specifics of how you can use this tactic in 2011 to build a business that is more enjoyable and rewarding.
Make sure you sign up to the form on the right to be notified of when this and other free articles get posted to the site.
After you’ve read the question, and you’ve come up with your answer, I’m going to give you what I think might be a slightly different answer.
Now obviously I don’t know you, and can’t be sure that my answer will actually be much different to yours – all I’m going on here are answers given to me in the past by clients and customers when I’ve hit them with this same question.
O.K…are you ready? Here it is…
What Is Marketing?
I know…pretty tough question right?
But let me ask you this…did you get an answer in your head straight away or did you need to stop and think for a second and try and work out some sort of definition?
It’s surprising how many times this question stumps people.
It’s not really a black and white question – everyone has their own different slant on what marketing means to them.
So what I’m going to give you now is one of my definitions.
And I say ‘one of’ because like everyone else I can come up with slightly different variations from time to time depending on what I’ve had for breakfast
But I had eggs this morning so here’s the definition I came up with:
“Marketing is the process of identifying who your ideal customer is, doing everything you can to understand the motivations and desires of that ideal customer, and then designing a plan to take this information and use the approprate tools and techniques to convince them that you’re offering exactly what they’re looking for.”
Dan Kennedy, a well known marketing consultant has a similar, and slightly more compact version
“Put the right message in front of the right person via the right medium”
You’ll notice in both of these definitions that there is an emphasis on the customer (ideal customer/right person), and this is really what good marketing is all about.
Not everyone is interested in what you have to offer – if you can identify and understand your ideal customers, marketing to them will simply be a matter of showing them that you understand what it is they’re looking for, and then convining them that no one else can deliver it like you can.
Use This Simple Technique To Create Powerful Marketing Messages
So how can you use this information to your advantage?
Well there is one powerful technique that you can use which can help you create powerful, compelling marketing messages without really needing any voodoo persuasion skills.
Here’s how it works.
Sit down and think about some of your past customers who you’ve had exceptionally good experiences with.
What you want to try and do is start thinking about the things that these particular clients and customers had in common i.e why were they such a good client?
- Maybe they belonged to a certain age group.
- Perhaps there are some common interest that allowed you to quickly develop a great working relationship with them.
- Maybe they worked in certain jobs or industries.
- Maybe they had a certain sense of humor or had similar life experiences to you.
You may need to dig a little bit, but you’ll eventually be able to come up with some reasons why those clients were such a good fit for you and your business.
Creating Your Customer Avatar
Once you’ve worked this out, your next job is to create an ‘avatar’ (not the tall, green kind) – this is kind of like an imaginary person that you create who represents who your ideal client would be.
You take the best traits from the best clients that you’ve ever worked with and you create a representation of all these people.
Now sometimes you’ll have had a client who you thought was perfect in every way, and if this is the case you can actually use that person as your avatar.
So why are we doing this?
Well, once you’ve got this avatar in your mind, you’re going to think about this person every time you go to create any sort of marketing promotion.
You want to write your promotion as if you were writing it specifically for this avatar and this avatar alone as opposed to writing in for anyone who might read or see it.
You see the most powerful marketing messages are always the ones that people feel were written specifically for them, and using this process helps you write these messages in such a way that they feel more personal to your ideal prospects and have a greater impact.
Now what you will find once you start writing in this way is that there will actually be more people who are kind of repelled by your marketing. They’ll feel that you just don’t offer what they’re looking for.
And that’s fine – in fact it’s exactly what you want, because on the other side of the coin you’ll have people who feel like you wrote your promotion for them and them alone, and they’ll find it hard to resist whatever it is you’re offering
You see good marketing is never indifferent – it attracts exactly the sort of people you want it to attract and does nothing for (and even repels) everyone else. It weeds out the bad prospects and sends you only the most qualified people who are a good fit for you and your business.
Over time as you get better at this process, you’ll end up working only with the people you want to, and can avoid the pain in the ass clients that we all know only too well.
So here’s your job for today, and in fact for 2011.
You want to move your business towards a situation where you’re working more and more with clients that make your working life enjoyable.
You do this by identifying the common traits these clients possess, and then creating promotions that this group of people find hard to resist, while at the same time ‘pushing away’ other groups of people who aren’t a part of that ideal target market.
Now I understand that all sounds well and good but you might need a few ideas about how you can put it into practice.
So I’ve got another article on the way which will get into some specifics of how you can use this tactic in 2011 to build a business that is more enjoyable and rewarding.
Make sure you sign up to the form on the right to be notified of when this and other free articles get posted to the site.
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