(Taken from “How to Fix Your Marketing Message to Get the Business You Deserve”)
The key to fixing the disappointing business results from your website or social media might be sitting right under your nose. Can your target market see the full value you offer? Probably not. If you can find and communicate this ‘hidden gold’, it could make all the difference to sales results, and here’s how to achieve it…
A classic story of value discovery that propelled a company to the top
In the 1800s, the Schlitz beer company was in trouble, lagging behind at 8th place in the U.S. market. They employed Claude Hopkins, a famous pioneering copywriter who was a bit out-of-the-box, to write some ads for them. He asked for a tour of the brewery and was amazed at what he discovered – things that were just everyday routine for the company…
– 4,000 foot deep artesian wells providing the purest water available; a mother yeast cell that came out of 1,200 experiments to yield the robust flavour; filtered air in production rooms to cool the beer without impurities getting in; pumps and pipes cleaned twice daily; and every bottle sterilized four times before filling with beer.
It took an objective outsider to appreciate all these ‘technicalities’. Wow! When he put all this into his ads (like the one on the right), the company leapt from 8th in the market to number one in only 6 months. But the really amazing thing is… all the other breweries were doing much the same thing! They simply weren’t communicating it to the market, but shouted “purity, purity” without actually proving it.
The hidden gold is with your clients – waiting for you to capitalize on
Your clients will see your business quite differently to you. The things that keep them coming back to you might be ‘right under your nose’, while the features you think are most exciting may not be such a big deal to them.
If you can get them talking freely and openly at a deeper level, you’ll find out. However, that’s not so easy in practice, but an objective outsider can achieve this by effective interviewing.
I helped one company, that solves noise problems for airconditioner installers, receive 20 times more enquiries off their website. Here’s a sample from the case study…
“I interviewed a few of their valued clients from different target market sectors to find out about their experiences, what they valued most about NCS, and the benefits that kept them coming back.
What transpired was the great end-to-end service they provide, taking a ‘global’ view to provide resourceful, cost-efficient, solutions backed with helpful advice – not just products.
Some really interesting stories emerged of saving the client’s bacon – avoiding all sorts of trouble with delays, expensive rework, council compliance, and hefty contract penalties!
NCS had clearly learned a lot of lessons over the years and developed expertise that they took for granted – assuming it was obvious to others, but wasn’t.”
These stories were a powerful proof of the value NCS offered. When written up in the clients’ own words, they were like word-of-mouth referrals – the ultimate marketing fodder. Instead of just reaching a few people by personal talk, they captured a wide audience of website visitors – building a lot of trust and interest in NCS.
When I re-wrote the website to touch the hot issues, supported by client stories, along with search optimization and a fresh design (see above), there was a sudden boom in quality leads.
Your potential success may not even be about your products, but the value-add service you provide. I asked a customer of one company how their products stacked up against competitors in the market, and he just said “they do the job”. Their loyalty was actually all about the helpful advice that reduced costs and avoided problems. In fact, the advice on how to do things more efficiently sometimes reduced the amount of products required, costing sales in the short term, but the goodwill and repeat business far outweighed it
Convey your full value to get the business you deserve
After a few interviews are done, patterns will show up in client issues, motivations, and what they value most in your company. This establishes a solid foundation of market intelligence to inform content writing for your website, ads, brochures, and social media. You might be amazed at the difference it makes to your sales. If you’d like a free assessment of your existing website, or someone to interview your clients to find your full value and boost your marketing results, contact me.