You are in business for a reason.
One thing that all business owners have in common is that they launched their business because they truly believe that there is ONE THING they can do better than anyone else. Perhaps your advantage is offering a better product or superior service at a lower cost. Maybe it’s delivering convenience. Or perhaps it involves a completely new concept.
No matter what your ONE THING is, that’s what sets your company apart from all of your competitors — and that’s what you need to be marketing to differentiate your business.
But before you start marketing, you have to make sure that your ONE THING is actually what you believe it to be. Make certain that you are properly assessing your company’s strengths by actively engaging with your customers and asking them about your business. Talk to your best customers and ask them why they keep coming back. Talk to your newcomers and ask what brought them in door. Talk to that occasional less-than-ideal customer and ask for their opinion about your company (even if you fear that you don’t want to hear it.) Talk to your neighbors if you are a retailer, talk with friendly competitors if you are primarily B2B. Don’t neglect to ask your frontline employees for their opinions as well.
Why should you go through this exercise? Because businesses evolve over time, and you want to make certain that you remain on the leading edge of your own evolution. Consider David H. McConnell, who sold books door-to-door in 1886. To entice female customers, he began offering small gifts of perfume. When his perfume became more desirable than his books, he shifted gears and founded the company that later became Avon.
While your own evolution might never be that dramatic, you don’t want to be caught in the trap of using valuable marketing resources to promote your company’s version of books when you should be promoting your perfume, so to speak.
Once you have confirmed what differentiates you, you need to take the next step. Go back to the focus groups you established and ask them how your company connects with them. This is tougher, because what you are looking for here is the emotional reason that customers use and then come back to your business.
For example, if your company is selling a new technology, ask why your customers like using it. Their initial answer might be something along the lines of because it saves them time. Keep digging deeper and asking more probing questions, and you may discover that it’s because they enjoy being known among their friends as a technological trendsetter. Likewise, if your restaurant is known for it’s healthy children’s menu, do local moms really care about whether their child likes your food better than the national chains, or do they value the feeling they get from believing they are prioritizing their children’s health?
Once you understand this critical connection between your business and your customers’ emotions, you can design all of your marketing to reinforce that linkage. Restaurants can sponsor dining night outs and kick back a portion of their proceeds for local schools to deepen their connections with parents. Tech companies can continue to innovate by offering updates and apps that allow customers to do more with the devices they have — and to crave new, more advanced models from your company.
So regardless of what your company does, have fun with your marketing! Think of it not as a chore, but as an effective means to tell your company’s story, introducing yourself to potential clients and strengthening relationships with existing customers.
And if you need help creating or executing your marketing plan, let’s have #CoffeewithMD and chat about how #BrandInspiration can help!
michael@brandinspirationonline.com or message/call 203.824.4282
