photo by Ian Hayhurst

I bet you’re really good at what you do.  You add a lot of value to the right kind of customers…probably way more value than you charge for (if you’re like most business owners I know).  You know your industry, your product and service inside and out.  In fact you could go into painful detail on how the work gets done…which actually might be part of the problem!

Which would you rather hear – a litany of facts and figures, features and benefits…or an engaging story that illustrates a problem, an approach and a solution (a happy ending!)?  It sounds like a pretty obvious choice, but look around at how most businesses present themselves from a marketing perspective.  The ones who don’t know any better talk way too much about themselves and about all the cool features they offer.  The smarter ones focus on benefits and outcomes, but even that can be pretty dry and unremarkable over time.

Maybe it’s time to think about telling some stories about your clients.

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  photo by x-ray delta one

Does your marketing suck?  Wouldn’t you like to strap on your mind control helmet and make your target market sit up and listen to all the great things you could do for them?

There are times when marketing feels like black magic…or maybe rocket science, but the reality is there are proven and well understood principles of marketing that, if followed, will get the right people raising their hands and asking to learn more about your product or service.

It’s not a silver bullet – these principles are fairly easy to understand, but they can be difficult to actually put into practice.  The good news is that you don’t have to be perfect off the bat – most of your competitors aren’t very good at marketing either (just look around at a lot of the marketing targeting you these days).  With a little bit of knowledge and effort, you’ve got a great opportunity to stand out and take control of your marketplace!

What are these tried and true principles?  Let’s take a look:

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  photo by peggyhr

Sometimes it can really help to look at things upside down…or backwards if you want to find some answers!  The change in perspective generates a lot of ideas and be a valuable tool.

I’m talking about Reverse Brainstorming – a simple and powerful way to spark ideas that might get overlooked if you were coming up with a list of things you could do. 

The process is simple – isolate a problem that you’d like to solve…in the article above they used the example of ‘How can we improve patient satisfaction’.  Then you simply reverse the idea and brainstorm possible answers on ‘How can we make patient satisfaction worse?.

The reversal opens up all sorts of possibilities and often puts you closer to the situation.  Let’s try a different example hits most small business owners:  “How do I get more effective marketing”?

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  Pam from The Office

There’s an important aspect of marketing that often gets overlooked.  The tendency is to think about marketing as advertising or branding, but marketing is also all about the little things. 

Marketing is every interaction that you (and your employees) have with your customers and prospective customers.  Are they greeted with a friendly smile?  Do they hear a somewhat formal “How can I help you today?” or an informal “What do you need?”.  It’s those details, the little touches, that create what your business is all about, that create the ‘wow’ moments people will talk about.

Do you look at your marketing as all of the little things that make a difference (and add credibility and power to any advertising you do)?  Do you start thinking of the small touches your clients would appreciate that are unusual in your industry?.  Maybe it’s time to upgrade your marketing – start with a smile…and here are some other ideas that might get you started:

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  photo by nolifebeforecoffee

Can your customers find your business when it comes to searching locally?

Back in April when Google released / updated Google Places they also shared that 20% of all searches done on Google included location…translating to nearly 3 Billion searches using Google data from March!!!

Beyond that, a recent study done by comScore and 15miles that asked ‘What’s the first thing you use when searching for local business information?’ had some interesting results on Local Search…

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