Your customers are the reason you’re in business.
They buy your products and services because they have a problem. For this reason, it’s important to tell your potential customers in all of your marketing efforts how you’re going to help them solve their problems. For example, let’s suppose I have a sore back, and I’m thinking of getting a massage. I’ve opened my phone book and looked at a few ads for massage businesses. They all look pretty similar; I see these same words over and over:
Reiki, hot stone, Swedish, deep tissue, acupressure, trigger point, and shiatsu. Now, if I’ve never had a message, I may not know what any of these words mean. So I go online and look up one example: Reiki. I find that Reiki can be used for many ailments, including stress reduction, relieving pain, headaches, back problems—aha! Now we’re getting somewhere. Your next step is to tell me how Reiki is going to relieve me of my back pain.
I keep reading and learn that there is no pressure on the body; sometimes the massager’s hands are even held away from my body. The energy flows wherever it is required and can be felt as a warm sensation or tingling. Reiki is a very relaxing and soothing experience.
Wow. I feel better already. If you’re in the massage business, your customers come to you with a problem—stress, pain, headache, backache, whatever. Your job is to solve this problem. Whatever business you’re in, you’ll be a giant step ahead of the competition if you tell them how you’re going to solve their problems. Remember, my phone book shows a number of ads for massage businesses, and not one of them offers this information.
Take a look at how you inform your prospective clients of your available products and/or services. Is it a list of things you offer, similar to every competitor’s? Or is it a convincing description of your solution to their problem? To attract prospects and clients, start with client problems for writing your marketing materials. Bonus idea: Do a survey among your clients to learn what problems they’re having with your competitors. Then solve that problem, and see your sales rocket above theirs.
In his 1983 classic How to Make Your Advertising Make Money, John Caples reminds us, “There is an old saying: ‘An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.’ True enough! But, with human nature being what it is, you will often find that a pound of cure is easier to sell than an ounce of prevention.”
So, what are you currently doing to promote your product or service?
What kinds of results are you getting?
Can you do better? Start by solving your client’s problem.
