Envisioning Success

It’s Not About You, it’s About “You”

Posted by Chris Shockley under Marketing

How many times in your marketing (advertising, website, sales pitches in the store) do you (you and your associates representing your company) use the terms I, We, and Our?

“We offer the best…”

“Our services are the best in the city…”

“Come in and get our…”

Well, if you hear it or say it a lot, consider changes tactics.

Like it or not, your customers don’t really care about you. They don’t. They care about themselves and their families. If they had only $10.00 left, would they buy your product or buy their family some food?

Your message should not be focused on what you can do for them or what features your product has (as in “our widget uses less or more…whatever”).

Your message should focus on them. Your marketing should be “You” centric (as in your customer). That is to say it should speak about the benefits to them. What is it exactly that your products and services will do to make their lives better?

Figure out what specific benefits your products and features have. It’s easy to miss when you start writing your marketing materials.

What if you sold cars; you’d talk about air bags, sat nav, sun roof and front wheel drive. All those things are great, but realize that no one cares about air bags, per se, what they care about is what air bags do; they increase safety. Or what about the sat nav? You won’t get lost, save time, feel safer, won’t get embarrassed, etc.

That is what should be emphasized.

Now, at this point in history, air bags and safety are pretty ubiqitous and almost every car comes with them, so you might not need to explicity say “Our cars make you safer because…”, but the example is a good one to show how easy it is to miss the benefit and just talk about the feature.

Think about the features of your products and services and then identify the specific benefit.

In my own business, I’ve been going through and trying to do this. Once of the things I do is digital printing (business cards, brochures, etc) and because I use and online printer, the price is ususally quite a bit lower than going to a local printer (who has to pay for their equipment). Well, lower price sounds like a great way to go about marketing that doesn’t it.

But is it?

How about thinking what benefits having a lower price are?

• More money for…
• Don’t get stuck with boxes of expensive outdated materials (right, since it’s cheaper you can afford to buy more often and not feel like you are throwing so much money away)
• Print a variety and test your marketing message (again, since it’s cheaper, you can afford to do this)

Anyway, to conclude, your customers what to know what you are going to do to make their lives easier. Think through your marketing and retool it to be “You” centric and not just about you.

Chris Shockley is owner of Envision Design Solutions and has been building websites for over 12 years. He can be reached via the web: http://www.EnvisionDesignSolutions.com/contact.php