Turn customers into a marketing weapon

PBN Staff

09/18/2010

Too many businesses get caught up in trying to find the “perfect” clients. The reality is you can’t find the perfect clients; you have to create them. You must give your clients reasons to keep coming back for more. You must connect with them so strongly that they cannot help themselves from telling their friends, family and colleagues all about you. Because in today’s slow economy, there is no better advertisement for your business than a happy customer who can’t help but sing your praises.
The following five core marketing principles will get you started on the road to creating perfect clients.
• Do what no one else is doing. It’s true that standing out from the crowd is probably the riskiest of the five principles. However, it may be equally risky to run a conservative, “under-the-radar” firm these days – you risk becoming an anachronism. While successful firms stick to their values, they also find ways to be so exciting that people don’t have a choice but to pay attention – and buy.
But in order to be noticed in a credible way, you must have a compelling reason for grabbing people’s attention. Your product, promotion, offer, staff, or culture – or something else about your business must be unique in some way.
• Focus your marketing on client benefits. Ensure you are answering the question, “What’s really in it for me?” for your clients. Too many businesses accentuate the features of their products or services rather than the benefits. “Open 24 hours” is a feature. Benefits are value statements about the features of a product or service, with an emphasis on what the customer gets. For example, a benefit might be that a product makes you look slimmer or saves lots of money on gas.
Too many companies leave it up to their prospects to figure out the benefits of their products or services. Remember, you may be steeped in information about your products and services, but they aren’t. It’s in your best interest to draw a crystal-clear picture of a product’s or service’s benefits for a prospective buyer.
• Go viral! A viral message is an idea, notion, or practice that’s transmitted from person to person through speech, gestures, the Internet, e-mail or other media. It ignites and motivates people to move the message. Most viral marketing programs give away valuable products or services to attract attention – free benefits, information, software programs or downloads. It’s essential that you do everything possible to make it easier for people to access information or material that may go viral. At my company, Red Zone Marketing, we recently began offering free downloads of products – such as workbooks, books and guides – that we had previously sold.
Because of our free offerings, we had access to countless people who were already familiar with our materials. We already had built some level of trust with potential readers and were able to capitalize on the viral travel of some of our free products to sell the newest tool we had available.
• Leverage your network for growth. It takes a plan, but using your network – business and otherwise – can be the miracle alternative to the typical grind of cold calls and prospecting. A productive business network is filled with respected, well-connected, influential people who share your target market and have a complementary rather than a competing service or product. You can capitalize on these connections by creating strategic alliances or by simply sharing your networks and making referrals.
Don’t ever forget that your clients are probably the best source of leveraging in your business. When customers are truly delighted about their experience with your product or service, they can become outspoken promoters for your company. This group of satisfied believers can be your most powerful marketing force – and they are free.
• Execution is the key to any game plan. In today’s fast-moving, completely networked world, superior execution is clearly driving success for business. Small-business owners are great at adopting many new marketing ideas. What they are not so great at is finishing. The best marketing strategy is the one you can pull off completely.
If a business chooses one particular approach – for instance, setting up a referral campaign – and carries out that one strategy until it’s executed fully and with precision, it is implementing the very best marketing strategy it can. It is not the strategy as much as its execution that achieves desirable results.
Perhaps more than ever before people want to do business with those they feel they can trust. They are attracted to businesses they feel will go out of their way to provide them the absolute best products or services available. And the absolute best way to elicit that trust in prospects is by having clients who cheer you on at every turn. •

Maribeth Kuzmeski is the author of five books and the founder of Red Zone Marketing LLC.

PBN Branded Content