Simon Dutta

No, I don’t mean that you should go door to door asking everyone in the neighbourhood what product or service would solve all of their troubles.  It’s about making your product or service a convincing solution to whatever problem they either knew, or didn’t know, that they had.

Don’t think you can do it?  You can.  But you have to plan it out well and come up with an undeniable marketing campaign that will blow them away.  Let’s start from the top:

Locating your Target Market

Before you can start anything, you need to find out who you should be selling to. Don’t bother with selling to “everyone”; that is just a waste of time, energy and resources.  Start thinking about who wants your product, who can afford your product, and who can be easily reached by you and your marketing campaign.

NOTE:  Remember that you do not need to be everything to everyone!  Focus on a small niche or target market and then branch out to other niches or target markets who you think will be interested in your goods or services.

Creating your Unique Perceived Benefit

In order to convince anyone to want to buy into what ever it is you’re selling, you need to make it seem so that it is special and unique. Otherwise, you will be caught up in rat race of competing prices and shrinking profit margins.  A unique perceived benefit should:

-    Tell the customer what your product or service does
-    Tell the customer why what your product or service does is unique
-    Indicate to the customer why you are more worthy of their business than anyone else

Is there something special and better about your process in creating or offering your product or service?  Is there a great story behind it? There’s something about everything that makes “it” unique, so start jotting down ideas.

Adding more Value to your Product or Service

The best thing that you can do for any new and existing customer is to add more value to your product and service.  There are several ways you can go about doing this:

-    Customer reactivation letters
-    Up-selling and Cross-selling
-    Using a “Buyers Remorse Letter” to ensure a sale and to also make another offer
-    Letters that offer other products and services
-    An incentive “reward” system

NOTE:  Your UPB will also play a very important role in adding more value to your product. As long as there is a “unique perceived benefit” to your product or service, customers will immediately feel better about where they are spending their money and feel instant value in your product or service.

It’s important that you also touch base with people within your target market, even if they haven’t used your product or service before.  People will focus on things that they need (or want) only when they need them.  Someone who’s not looking for a new car will just toss out any car sales advert they get.  But everyone needs a new car at some point, so when that time comes, you want to be the dealership with the right ad right on their doorstep.

ABOUT: Simon Dutta has 20+ years’ executive marketing and business development experience spanning 18 countries and 24 industry sectors within start-ups, SMEs and multi-£billion blue-chips. His particular expertise lies in driving revenue growth by: (1) developing products that the market actually wants; and (2) executing customer acquisition and retention strategies that actually work. Simon is a Certified Internet Marketer, Chartered Marketer, and Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing.  He also sits on the Chartered Institute of Marketing’s Regional Board (West Midlands).