Taking your message to market - IMPACT

Why does this matter?

Think about the amount of information we are bombarded with at any given point of time and take into account all the information sources that compete for our attention.

+ Email
+ Internet
+ Signs
+ Brochures
+ Junk mail
+ Letters
+ Phone calls
+ Message bank
+ Reports
+ Flyers
+ Radio
+ Television
+ FOXTEL, and the list goes on and on

What is it that grabs your attention?

+ Big
+ Bold
+ Loud
+ Emotive
+ What else?

Perhaps a more important question to ask as a business owner is “What doesn’t grab my attention?”

The information overload phenomenon that we are all faced with many choices about what we take in and what we dismiss. We cannot possibly retain every piece of information we are exposed to.

As a business operator, we want to ensure that our marketing spend has the best possible chance of success by being noticeable and memorable. To do that, our marketing must have impact and reach. Today we will address impact only. Reach is a topic for another day.

Impact

Impact demands that we get our marketing message right.

This is about responding to needs among a specific audience – your customer base, and requires a thorough understanding of the benefits or VALUE of the products and/or services that you offer to them.

E.g. If we are a cleaner, the product we offer is cleaning, but the value we offer could be “more spare time”, “relief”, “freedom to do what we want to do rather than what we have to do”.

Too many of us focus our marketing on the features of our products and not enough on the value of those products to our clients. The result is that we are unable to cut through the information overload and therefore miss the mark in connecting with our target audience.

How many of us have ever asked our clients what they get from using our services? We think we know, but do we really know?

Marketing should not be about the product. It should be about the value that the product or service represents. This is how you will achieve real impact.

Business Application

Many of us spend a lot of valuable time and energy developing products and services to sell without really understanding the true value of what they mean to our clients.

My encouragement to you is to take some time to do just that. Get the feedback. This information is an important asset for your business. It will help you to not only create effective marketing campaigns, but it will assist you to increase the value “hit” for your clients wherever and however you can.

Embed the value message into every element of your operations, from marketing to sales, to product and service delivery, customer service principles right down to phone answering, staff dress code and stationery choices. All of those things impact on the perception of your business by others. They all contribute to and support the marketing that you do and they contribute to building a hugely important asset in your business - your brand.

Email: nbaines@sydneyhillsbusiness.com.au
Web: http://www.sydneyhillsbusiness.com.au/