Does Your Business Stand Out?
In this article, you’ll learn the 4 reasons anyone has bought anything in the history of humanity, the easiest way to find out what’s on your customer’s mind, and some of my other favorite direct response persuasion tools.
Listen. By now, you may have figured out I have a lot to tell you about persuasion techniques and marketing strategy.
A key part of successfully getting clients for anyone is being able to explain who you are and what you do in a way that gets people to “know like and trust you”.
Simple right!
It might sound simple, but anyone who’s pitched themselves (or tried to do any marketing for their business) knows that it’s not as easy as it sounds.
Today I want to take this good hearted, common sense business advice and break it down into actionable steps for you.
Can your business stand out in a league above your competitors every time you pitch? Or in every one of your ads?
Yes it can, and today I’ll break down the tools to help you do it.
You’re going to learn a framework to think about “standing out”, how to find out what your target market actually cares about, and how to find the sizzle of you steak — so to speak (if you have no clue what that means it’s a marketing reference and you have to keep reading, there is a lot here for you).
What do they want?
I have to tell you something. And it might be the meanest thing you’ve heard all day, and I am sorry if it hurts but I wouldn’t feel right if I didn’t tell you…
Your target market doesn’t care about you.
People who have never bought from you don’t care about you, your company, or your product.
Not that I don’t! Believe me, I do — more than anything. To be honest I really suffer from “over delivery” syndrome, and I actually stress about it a lot! (Sometimes, maybe too much lol.)
But I’m sorry, your market doesn’t care about you.
If you’ve invested a lot of time into developing an audience, that might be a different story but…
DON’T get discouraged.
There is a way to overcome this.
Let’s talk benefits.
Unless you can understand what they want, you can never sell them.
Unless you can understand what your market is hoping to get out of your product, you can never hope to persuade them to buy it.
Note on “Product”: I know some of you have service businesses and are thinking to yourself “Wait a minute, I don’t have a product!”. In this article I am going to use “product” interchangeably with “business” or “yourself” (if you’re a solopreneur). When I say “product” in this article, I am referring to what it is that you are selling. Whatever form that happens to take!
There are two keys to finding what your customers wants:
- Actually finding out what their priorities, fears and goals are
- Understanding their motivations
How can you find out what the fears and goals are of people who buy from you?
Gee… How about asking them?
Most businesses don’t realize they’re sitting on a literal gold mine — their client lists.
Here are 3 classic marketing questions you should immediately ask all of your previous customers:
- What’s your most pressing issue concerning…?
- What’s your worst fear concerning…?
- What’s your biggest dream concerning…?
Where you fill in the “…” with the topic of your business.
For example, if you were a gym your questions might look like “What’s your most pressing issue concerning losing weight?”, “What’s your worst fear about weight loss and health?”, “What’s your biggest dream about losing weight?”
(Obviously it’s not a strict template, but try to be sure that when you “fill in the blanks” that you are not varying the adjectives too much — you need to ask 3 questions on the same topic.)
Have the responses recorded in a survey software like Google Forms, you’re going to want to be able to easily reference the text of the responses.
Look for common patterns (what’s everyone commenting on the most), and phrases that jump out at you.
You can rip your landing page copy (or Facebook ad, whatever copy) straight off of your customers!
By now, you should have a pretty good idea of your audience’s priorities, fears and goals. Now we can move on to understanding your audience’s motivations.
The ONLY 4 Reasons Anyone EVER Has Bought Anything in the HISTORY OF HUMANITY
Jon Benson is an awesome direct response marketer, and he developed the perfect tool for understanding your audience’s motivations.
It makes wrapping your head around the purchasing motivations in any market a snap — because it turns out that all purchasing decisions can be boiled down to the same 4 components:
- Wants
- Fears
- Pleasures
- Needs
When you’re looking at the survey information from earlier, you can sort the responses you got into these categories to get an understand of what types of sales arguments work the best in your market.
What are the differences between the 4?
Needs, it’s not only Maslow stuff — but also practical obstacles that need solutions.
Maybe you work 20 miles away from where you live, so you might need a car to get to work.
A want is preferences about the solution.
I might need a car, but I want a Tesla with an all-leather interior.
Fears, that one is pretty obvious.
Pay special attention if you notice a trend of your audience predominantly using your product to avoid a fear. Avoiding loss can be an even more powerful motivator than gaining something.
So if a lot of people are mentioning that, you may actually want to shift marketing communications to “go for the jugular”! Check out this copywriting formula for fear driven markets…
Pleasures, in this framework are the positive benefits that a customer experiences that don’t necessarily fit into any of the prior categories.
One example that Jon Benson uses for a benefit that falls in the Pleasure category, in the fitness industry (example), is “being skinny”, “having more energy”, and “feeling beautiful”.
Putting it Together…
So how do you make your business stand out?
The way marketers decide what the best thing to say about a product is by creating a statement that spells out who should buy your product and why they should want it.
This statement will become the foundation and guiding light for all of your marketing communications: advertising, packaging, public relations, content marketing.
It’s called strategic positioning. You should have a pretty clear idea of what’s on your audience’s mind by now. It’s time to wrap that information up into a powerful, laser focused statement.
You’re going to write a statement of 1–2 sentences that clearly explains your product, that will guide the formation of any marketing campaign or sales copy going forward.
Think you need more than just one sentence?
“You’re trying to say too much, and your message is… diluted. If you can’t say it simply, your consumer can’t understand it.” — Eric Schulz
Your statement should be SO specific, that the statement could only possibly be describing your product.
It may be tempting to write the statement VERY broadly. It can feel scary when you are standing at the fork in the road, to make a choice.
“Resist this trap. If your product stands for everything, it stands for nothing. Don’t be afraid to describe your product in the clearest, most intriguing terms possible. ONLY THEN will consumers appreciate your benefit and become loyal to your product” — Eric Schulz
Instead, you are setting out to craft a clear, relevant but unexpected strategic positioning statement that creates a meaningful point of different and competitive advantage for your product. An amazing resource on this if you’re looking to dive deeper is a book called The Blue Ocean Strategy.
It might sound complicated to do this, but don’t worry! Strategic positioning is really as easy as ABC…
Audience, Benefit, and Compelling reason why!
The #1 problem in marketing today is failing to state a consumer benefit. Companies literally spend millions of dollars to tell their target market about their product, without closing the sale. Without getting to what’s in it for them.
How many commercials have you seen like this? “Now you have another choice for prescription allergy treatment. Allergex. Allergex is available from your doctor. Ask your doctor if Allergex is right for you.”
Too many is the answer.
From the market research techniques we talked about before, you should already have the Audience and Benefit down — so most of your work will be tinkering with the Compelling reason why.
So how do you iron out that Compelling reason why?
A great way to start is to look at your Benefit and explain how you offer the benefit.
Here is an example of adding in a Compelling reason why from Citibank.
Citibank was spending money on marketing its Citishopper service to consumers who called in to the bank over the phone. The target market was told “Citishopper can find you the lowest prices on over 200,000 name-brand items.”
Yeah, it didn’t convert that well.
Here’s the change they made which grew their conversions. Spoiler: It’s adding a Compelling reason why.
“Citishopper can find you the lowest prices on over 200,000 name-brand items. That’s because our computers continually monitor prices at over 50,000 retailers nationwide, ensuring you get the lowest prices available anywhere.”
That single change to the script was responsible for all of the conversion increase.
So here is a quick formula you can take out of that example to create your own Compelling reason why:
Benefit. That’s because _______.
Now, I want you to know that your strategic positioning statement won’t be perfect the first time.
Quick question.
How long do you think advertising agencies spend on these? A few days, a few weeks?
More like a few months.
Don’t be surprised if your own statement goes through several transformations over the next few weeks or months! And when you nail it, don’t be surprised when your business gets a sudden increase in response.
The strategic positioning statement is the key to making your business stand out in pitches, in copy, and in any communication about your business.
