Is Your Marketing Reaching Your Ideal Customer?

What is the actual purpose of marketing? I mean, what is marketing really supposed to do? Well, marketing is supposed to help your prospect make a decision. Some prospects need to buy what you sell. Sometimes they need to be educated first, and other times... they know what they want, but they need help deciding who they should buy it from. Often, they think they want what you sell, but they have questions and concerns that need to be overcome before they'll pull out their wallet.

And if your prospect can't differentiate you from your competitors, you'll wind up competing on price. I'd like to propose a different scenario. The one where you stand out from your competition. The one where the prospect clearly understands why they should buy from you. And it's not because you've "been in business for 40 years."

Most marketing, today, is based on C and R. Creativity and Repetition. Business create an unusual ad, funny, shocking, emotional... and they run it over and over again in the hopes that they company name will get burned into their prospect's brain. And that works really well for huge companies with big marketing budgets. Think Coca-Cola, Dominoes, Home Depot. But small business don't have huge marketing budgets, so that strategy won't work. It's not about the 'impressions' or the 'clicks.' It's about revenue! If my marketing says that I offer high quality and great service, as a prospect, my brain says, "Well, of course you do!"

I'm not saying that those things shouldn't be in your marketing. What I'm saying, is that you have to stand out from the crowd in order to be noticed. Otherwise you end up competing on price. Just ask yourself this simple question WHY would anyone choose you over your competition? And if anyone else can say the same thing, we'll want to work on improving our marketing. It's not "who can do what you do" it's "who can say what you say."

So let me show you how you can fix this. Let me explain how you can follow a simple process called the Conversion Equation. The conversion equation has four main components. The first component of the conversion equation is called Interrupt. This is simply the process of getting qualified prospects to pay attention to your marketing. This is often accomplished by affecting the prospect emotionally. Sounds simple enough, doesn't it? Unfortunately, it's a lot more difficult to pull this off in real life... unless you understand what you're about to learn here.

The second component is Engage. Once the prospect is interrupted, it's critical to give them the promise that information is forthcoming that will help them make the best decision possible or, in other words, facilitate their decision-making process. This is also best accomplished on an emotional level.

The third component is Educate. Once you've interrupted and engaged the prospect, you have to give them information that allows them to logically understand how and why you solve that emotional problem. This is accomplished by giving detailed, quantifiable, specific, inside-reality-revealing information. This turns the corner from an emotional sell -- remember... you interrupted and engaged them based on emotional hot buttons -- to a logical sell. This is easy to do if you just follow this Conversion Equation.

And the fourth and final component of the Conversion Equation is the Offer. Now the prospect has been interrupted based on problems that are important to them emotionally, engaged by the promise of a solution to that emotional problem, and they've examined the educational information that makes your solution to that emotional problem real and believable. 

So, the last step is for you to give that prospect a low... or better yet... NO risk way for them to take the next step in the sales process. This can be accomplished by offering a free marketing asset -- such as a report, brochure, seminar, audio, video, or something similar -- that educates them even more... so the prospect feels in complete control of the decision-making process. This Conversion Equation follows the formula for what marketing is supposed to do in the first place. In fact, at this point, we can simply say that your marketing's job is to interrupt, engage, educate, and offer.

Now in order for the Conversion Equation to work, you have to know your prospects hot buttons. What are their problems, frustrations, uncertainties, and annoyances when purchasing what you sell? Stay tuned for my next article where I'll cover hot buttons.