Points to get across
Townsville WE had an awesome marketing mentoring session this week with about a dozen small business owners. Let’s look at some of the best take- outs.
The session was to go over the pressure points in their business. We consider pressure points as those moments where a customer engages with your business and decides if they will continue with you or not.
The three main areas we covered were their Unique Selling Proposition and the Customer Touch Points. Positioning who you are We were looking at their Unique Selling Proposition ( USP) and all agreed they needed to make these punchier. But interestingly the problem they had with their USP was not common.
Some had to be tighter and focus on what they did so people actually “got it” at first sighting. Our local artist sells watercolours all over the broader region. She chases commissions and gets plenty of referrals but too many are in areas of art she can’t deliver on.
After a quick bit of exploration we find that she sells pieces to dog lovers all over the world for her watercolours of pet owners with their pets.
Her positioning now includes the fact that she is the home of the World’s Best Pet Portraits in Watercolour and her website is being adjusted accordingly.
Beats being artist!
And others needed to broaden the meaning of what they do. By broadening their offering they were able to offer their services to a broader client base.
For example Sue from our roofing business did a whole host of other things for clients that went beyond roofing so we adjusted their positioning to pick this up and she is targeting insurance builders as an emerging source of work.
It is always a good time to consider if your USP is appealing to the right just another general range of customers so you get more of the sort of clients you WANT. Massage your touch points Going around the table we asked how many times they have contact with a prospect before they buy ( if they buy). Incredibly it was only 1 – 3 contacts for a sale.
Wow! We have only got a few opportunities to impress upon a prospect what we do, how we do it, why they should consider us over competitors, where to start, etc.
There is a lot of info to cover there and we found most of their marketing materials were not even close to doing a good job.
Check out your various customer touch points with your prospects and ensure they are:
CLEAR – They speak plainly about what you do. Leave the jargon behind;
CONCISE – Be succinct and cut to the chase with a reason to buy or inquire further. Our yoga teacher took 10 minutes to tell us what she did in person. It was an interesting story but simply too long. And no one gives us that time with our marketing;
CONSISTENT – They must be consistent and congruent. For example what is said on social media, our website and by our staff must align. All must have any latest offers on them and they all have to be current; and
COMPELLING – A lot of the of- fers they had were weak. If you know the value of a customer over their lifetime with you then you can afford to give them a great value proposition to commence trading with you.
For example our recruiter wanted upfront payments over 12 months to be secured, no exceptions. It is a big barrier to getting started.
We need to be prepared to give something up to win over clients for the long term.
If we get more of the Customer Touch Points aligned with the Unique Selling Proposition for those clients, then we must improve our conversion rate. And a conversion can be a final sale, a follow up inquiry to the next stage in the sale, or at the very least a strong brand impression in the mind of the prospect.
Mark Jones is the managing director of Your Digital Solution, a specialist business strategy, marketing and technology consultancy