Think Marketing Strategies, Not Just Tactics

OK. I’m a little frustrated now. So forgive me if this sounds a bit like a rant. But you’d think that suffering through more than a year of economic angst would motivate enterprises to reconsider the way they’ve been doing business and build better models. As the world’s financial giants have recently demonstrated, however, many companies just don’t get it. They’re returning to business as usual. And that doesn’t bode well for any of us.

Obviously, my focus is on the changes organizations need to make in their marketing schemes. Throughout these difficult times my colleagues and I have advised clients to reexamine their entire marketing approach, take a fresh look at what they and their customers desire, and develop new programs that will profitably deliver customer satisfaction.

Granted, this is not easy to accomplish and it may take time to see the results. That’s why some companies choose to gamble on “quick fix” tactics that they hope will work immediately. But the simple truth is that your business needs sound marketing strategies, not just tactics. And folks, tweaking the advertising message, cutting prices and opening a Twitter account are not strategies. Your customers are looking for the best values they can find, not simply the lowest cost. That means they want the whole package: Good solutions, great customer service, and genuine convenience, as well as fair prices.

So what kinds of strategies should you consider? Well, first, remember that strategies are the big ideas that will help you achieve your business goals, not the action steps that make your strategies work – those important tactics come later. You might begin by asking yourself some fundamental questions like these:

• How well do my products and services satisfy my customers’ needs? What problems are they solving for my customers? Are there changes we can make that will better satisfy the customers while protecting our profitability? Do we have good information about what the customer wants from us, or do we need to conduct some research?

• Is our pricing structure such that the customer recognizes the value they receive for the cost? Do we need to bundle certain items together, or deconstruct existing combinations of goods and services? Are we over or under pricing our goods and services? Do we really understand our customer’s perception of value?

• How easy is it for our customers to do business with us? Are we using the right forms of distribution? Are our selling techniques in sync with the customer’s buying habits? Have we adapted to the changing nature of consumer behavior?

• Are we communicating a clear, consistent and compelling story to our customers? Are we delivering the promises made in our communications? Do we continue to use only broadcast messaging or are we augmenting it with more direct efforts? Are we embracing social marketing concepts to build long-term relationships with our publics?

While not an exhaustive list, the answers to these questions should point you toward those marketing areas where you need to develop new strategies. Your strategies may include changes to your product offering, new pricing policies, improvements in customer care delivery, operational changes in the way you deal with customers before, during and after a sale, a rethinking of your brand image, and how you engage in communications with your various publics.

These well-thought-out strategies will lead to the action steps that will carry you to greater success today and for the future.

Miss-marketing Healthcare Reform

I find it surprising that the White House has done such a poor job of marketing its healthcare reform package. Especially when you consider how incredibly efficient the Obama campaign was in using all forms of marketing to win the presidential election. A few observations:

1) Social media marketing was one of the cornerstones of the presidential campaign, but we’ve heard very little about its use promoting healthcare legislation. Why?

2) The opposition has clearly been successful fueling grassroots opposition to the administration’s plan, often using fear and other emotional triggers to their advantage. The counteractions by the Administration relied more heavily on rational discourse. This is a highly emotional issue, and the President has not tapped into those emotions strongly enough.

Yet, at the heart of the matter, may be the most fundamental of marketing mistakes. First, from the outset, Obama’s message has not been clear, consistent and compelling. It was purposely vague on specifics so that Congress could take the President’s broad concepts and work out the details in true democratic fashion. Unfortunately, this opened the door to speculation and allowed opponents to take certain aspects of what the House was considering out of context. These issues, then, became the basis of the protests and loud opposition.

Second, the White House may have underestimated the depth of concern many Americans have with the idea of the Federal Government being directly involved in their healthcare, and the resistance to change among those Americans who are satisfied with their present healthcare situation.

The President then played “catch-up” by appearing on as many news and talk shows as possible, in an effort to turn the tide. Unfortunately, as every marketer knows, once your credibility is called into question – whether warranted or not – it’s extremely difficult to convince the audience to have faith in your message.

Good marketing is knowing your audience, making sure you can align your product with the wants and needs of that audience, crafting a clear, concise, consistent and compelling message and reaching your audience through the most effective channels.

Obama did this brilliantly during the Presidential campaign. For healthcare reform? Not so much.

Telling Your Story

Business people like to deal with facts and figures. After all, that’s how we typically measure success. We look at sales numbers, market share, gross margin, EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization) etc., etc. It’s good and necessary that we use these metrics to evaluate and manage our enterprises. However, there are times when facts and figures are simply not enough, especially when it comes to presenting our marketing messages to existing or potential customers.

This is particularly true in business-to-business presentations where product specifications, ROI and other factors often take center stage. Of course all of these things are important for the customer to know. The problem is this: we forget that even the most analytical buyers seldom make purchasing decisions solely on the basis of fact. The truth is that, in most cases, it’s the emotional responses people have to products, services and the people who represent and support them that tip the scales.

As taught for decades by sales educators from Dale Carnegie on down, and proven by their pupils’ successes, we tend to buy from people we know, like and trust. Which means your customers need to know more than just the bare facts. They need you to tell them your story. And the more vivid and engaging that story is, the better your chances of making the sale.

This was driven home to me recently through a conversation with one of the CEOs I coach. Having built up and successfully sold one business, this entrepreneur recently turned a personal hobby into a growing business that is already recognized by major players in his industry and his state’s government. He was recently invited to speak before an influential industry group that can open the door to a large number of potential customers.

We discussed his presentation strategy that included a comprehensive slide show full of important facts and figures about his new operation. As we reviewed his presentation he expressed concern about holding the audience’s interest throughout the talk. I agreed that, in the limited time he was allotted, he might overwhelm the audience with too many statistics and not be able to convey enough of the passion he feels for this endeavor.

I suggested that instead of relying on the slides, he use other tools to tell his story that will let his personality and commitment shine through. He agreed and this is how the presentation unfolded: After introducing himself, he showed a 4-minute video presentation we developed for his Web site and as a sales tool. Through narration, music and imagery, this video concisely explains his business model and outlines its benefits to the customers. It tells the story simply while tapping into emotional issues we know resonate with his customers.

Following this presentation, the CEO told the rest of the story: How he has developed an easy-to-understand-and-implement process that can turn an industry that is struggling to survive into one with a promising future for all those involved. He then described a few customer success stories that illustrated and supported his claims. Finally he distributed a fact sheet with statistical information appropriate for his audience, and answered questions.

By focusing on the story-telling and using the facts and figures throughout to support his statements, the CEO engaged the audience as human beings as well as business people. Because he is passionate about what he is doing, thoroughly understands this industry and his process, and has the facts to back him up, he told his story convincingly and reached his audience emotionally as well as intellectually. By all measures it was a highly successful presentation.

How about you? Is it time to take an objective look at how you tell your story? Does your passion and commitment shine through? Do you showcase how what you do benefits those people who are your customers? Or are you hiding your most appealing messages under a bushel of facts and figures?

Thanks For Reading This

Thank you for reading this. In fact, thank you for reading, period. With the plethora of communications technologies now available, reading the written word is becoming a lost art. Sure, we “read” all day long: Tweets, text messages, emails, blogs, Web sites, social and business networks, on e-readers like Kindle, and, on occasion, in newspapers and magazines like this one.

But how much are we really absorbing? Fact is we have so many easily accessible sources of information that many of us feel pressured to visit them all – and often. This demands a great deal of time, so we’ve become masters of scanning and skimming. Which means we often come away with no more than a superficial understanding of what we’ve been exposed to.

Now consider your role as a marketer: You’re using a mix of traditional, “new,” and social media to best reach your target audience, including many of those discussed above. Knowing that readers are scanning these media for only those messages that are of immediate interest, and skimming the first few words for relevance makes it vitally important that what you say about your enterprise is concise, compelling and consistent.

This is nothing new, of course. We’ve known for years that the headline of a print ad, the opening few seconds of a radio or TV spot, or the landing page of a Web site must grab the audience’s attention and lead them into the rest of the message. Unfortunately, because attention spans are now measured in nanoseconds and the audience is only interested in that which is relevant to their immediate situation, this task has become much more challenging.

All of which means that now, more than ever, you need to have a clear understanding of what your business is all about, and be able to boil it down to a simple yet powerful message that permeates all of your communications. It’s the most basic and yet often overlooked tenant of marketing: Know your company’s unique value as concerns your target customers.

This requires thinking carefully about what your organization’s reason for being truly is. Remember: Your company’s value to your customer is not merely the sum of your people, products, services or assets – no matter how great they are. To your customers, the only thing that really matters is how well whatever it is they buy from you meets their needs. Which means you need to understand your customer’s problems and align your resources to help solve them.

A classic example is Black & Decker. At the outset, the company owned the hand-held electric drill business. Thanks to patent protection, they rightfully saw themselves as the company that invented and sold the electric drill. Eventually, however, someone in the company recognized that what they were really selling wasn’t a drill at all. They were selling the ability to make holes.

In other words, the company was selling a solution for people who wanted to make holes in a variety of materials, and do so faster and easier than they could with other methods. This revelation enabled the company to understand that it wasn’t simply about making and selling electric drills. It was a company that sold people the ability to do their work faster and easier through a reliable, powerful product. Looking at it that way, the company could entertain making and selling a variety of laborsaving tools and accessories.

Armed with this perspective, the company built a brand identity with consumers that immediately conjures up an image of reliable power tools that make it easier to perform tasks in and around the home. This means that regardless of the media used, the core message of what the company offers resonates with millions of customers.

I suggest that, if you haven’t already done so, take some time for reflection and make sure you fully understand what your organization is all about. The big question: How does your organization satisfy the wants and needs of your customers? Then craft a concise message that quickly communicates your true value. Use it to advertise, sell, Tweet, blog, etc., etc., etc.

Oh, yes. And thanks, again, for reading this.

How Not To Do Strategic Planning

Every organization needs a well thought-out marketing plan that establishes strategies and actions to help achieve its most important business objectives. Otherwise, you may apply your resources to programs and projects that offer little or no return on investment. One key here, of course, is that the marketing piece must be an integral part of the overall strategic planning effort, not simply tacked on later.

The second key is to be certain your marketing objectives are clearly defined and shared with all personnel. For as the Roman philosopher Seneca put it: “If one does not know to which port he is steering, no wind is favorable.”

Given the importance of strategic marketing, it never fails to amaze me that some companies create a plan only to have it gather dust on a credenza. Meanwhile marketing dollars are tossed at projects based on whims, warm feelings or the reading of tealeaves. I can only conclude that there are those who see the planning process as simply an annual ritual for satisfying the board, the bank or their own, oversized egos. For these misguided souls I offer the following suggestions guaranteed to help you produce a document worthy of being forgotten as soon as it’s completed.

How Not To Do Strategic Planning

1. Meet on-site. There’s nothing like the distraction of phone calls and other interruptions to keep the team from focusing on the task at hand. Besides, look how much you’ll save by not booking a hotel meeting room. Plus you can let everyone make their own lunch plans so there’s no danger of keeping the discussion juices flowing.

2. Make sure you personally lead the discussions. You don’t want some trained, outside facilitator mucking things up with strange ideas or exercises that get everyone involved and maybe even bring a fresh perspective to the sessions. After all, you need to control this exercise to prove you’re worth the big bucks.

3. Don’t assign any homework. If you let your people think about your organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats independently, they may not all agree. Then how do you get this darn thing done in a few hours?

4. Forget research. Go with your gut. If you don’t have all of the facts, just make a lot of assumptions. After all you’re only betting the future of the company on what you think your customers want and need, and how well they think you deliver on your promises.

5. Listen to the nay-sayers When old Charlie reminds you that you “tried that once and it didn’t work”, make sure everyone knows how much you value his input and encourage other risk-adverse thinking.

6. Have a good laugh about the stupid, new ideas some of your people come up with. There’s nothing like a little ridicule and embarrassment to stifle creative thought.

7. Take the Nike® approach. You know that your people are basically lazy and have lots of excuses for not producing the sales, gross margins or net profits you’re entitled to. So set your goals, no matter how unrealistic, and then tell them to just do it!

8. Keep The Plan Confidential. Don’t share the goals and strategies with anyone outside of the meeting. It’s enough that your key reports know what is expected. Letting the rank and file in on the plan is just too time consuming and may raise a lot of irritating questions.

Building Your Brand Inside & Out (2.0)

The pride of Scotland, poet Robert Burns wrote: “Oh wad some power the giftie gie us
To see oursel’s as others see us!”

So how do you see your company? How do your customers and potential customers see you? And most important: Do you and those in your target markets see your organization in the same way?

These questions, of course, go to the heart of building and maintaining your brand. Last week we talked about how important it is that your internal audience – everyone from the CEO to your newest hire – clearly understands the company’s vision of what your brand represents, and that your people deliver your brand’s promises to everyone they come in contact with. It’s no easy task, as it requires educating new employees and continuously reinforcing the message with each team member. However, it’s absolutely essential to your organization’s success.

But what if your brand image no longer resonates with your customers? What if you’re out of touch with the true wants and needs of your target markets? What if you’ve stumbled a few times? Perhaps you introduced a product that didn’t perform as expected or instituted a customer policy that backfired. Fact is it’s easy to cruise along on autopilot, blissfully unaware that customers are slipping away because they no longer believe you’re a good source for what they desire.

So how do you know if your current and potential customers still find your brand message relevant in their lives? I suggest you ask them. And, in most cases, the best way to do so is through a third party: a reliable market research firm. Yes, I know. Your salespeople and other representatives are in touch with your customers on a regular basis. But they often hear what they want to hear and not necessarily the customer’s true feelings. Even worse, they are not necessarily in touch with all of the people you would like to have as customers.

A good market researcher will help you define the right questions to ask and develop a plan for getting the answers you need. The approach may be quantitative (statistically reliable research that gives you percentages you can project to a larger audience with a stated degree of certainty) or qualitative (not statistically projectable, but good information nonetheless, from personal interviews or focus groups). The researcher then implements the plan, analyzes the data and interprets the findings for you.

The goal of this exercise is to find out what current customers and those you would like to have as customers really think of your company. What is the image they have of your organization? Do they see what you would like them to see? And is it something they want, need and care about? If the research confirms that you and your potential customers are on the same page, terrific! If not, it’s time for some serious soul-searching that goes well beyond developing a new slogan or advertising campaign. You need to take a careful look at what the market is telling you and how this information aligns with your company’s mission, vision and values. Because if you don’t “see yourself as others see you” and successfully address the needs of the marketplace, someone else will.

Internal Brand Building

A company’s brand is one of its most valuable assets. So much so that many high profile companies, such as Coca-Cola and Disney go to extreme lengths to protect their brands from misuse. This stands to reason because, to the public, the brand is the company’s identity. It’s not merely a name or a logo. The brand is also an image: The picture of what a company is and what it stands for that registers in the public’s consciousness.

What some companies seem to overlook is that building a brand is not merely an exercise in marketing communications. Not that promotion and communication aren’t vital parts of the branding process, indeed they are. But first there must be substance to your branding message. Your organization must actually be the image you convey to your customers. So brand building must be approached from the inside out.

What does this mean? Well, first you need to take a hard look inside your enterprise. Do your employees truly deliver the promises made in your brand messaging? If, for example, you claim to guarantee customer satisfaction, do you let the customer determine what it means to be satisfied? Or do you load up your front line employees with lists of questions to ask, time limits on returns and exchanges, and enough exceptions to fill a phone book? If so, you have a serious disconnect between your brand promise and the brand experience. In other words, your customers have certain expectations based on the promises of your message (I can’t go wrong shopping here because they guarantee I’ll be satisfied), but their experience with your company falls short of their expectations (I had to argue with the salesperson and complain to management before they fixed the problem). As a result, your brand message loses its credibility and the customer is less likely to believe anything you say in the future.

So how can you be sure that your employee’s actions and your brand promise are in sync? By establishing and maintaining an internal branding effort. The key elements of this process are:

1) Discovery: In this phase you learn what your employees truly think about your organization and your brand message. Have a competent third party conduct a survey that guarantees complete anonymity to the employees. Be prepared for a few surprises.

2) Analysis and Action: Once you evaluate the input from your employee survey, you may discover some changes that you need to make in your operations, compensation or other policies that create divisions between your brand strategy and the abilities and willingness of your employees to support it.

3) Education: As executives, we often assume that if we recognize something that needs to be done, our people will jump to it (one of my client friends calls this being a “See/Done” executive). In reality, we must do more than simply announce what is needed. In most cases employees should be educated about what your brand means and how they are to embody the brand to their customers and others. This educational effort should include everyone who works for the company, regardless of title and pay grade.

4) Tracking and Accountability: Here’s where those customer surveys come into play. The information you gather from your ongoing customer satisfaction research will reveal how well your people are delivering the brand promise. Use this information to hold people and departments responsible. Reward the high achievers, build up the stragglers and eliminate the incorrigibles.

5) Continuous Communications: Research proves that one-shot advertising is largely a waste of money. You may get a short-term boost, but no lasting value. That’s why promotional programs must be ongoing and consistent. The same is true for keeping your employees in tune with your brand message. You must continuously reinforce the brand through ongoing internal communications, using one-to-one coaching, the written word, regular meetings, events, a special employee only Web site or any other means that works within your organization.

Unleash The Power Of Your Customers

Want to stretch your marketing dollars? Here’s how: Leverage your satisfied customers.

It’s easy if you’re a truly marketing-centered organization. After all, you’ve built your business by helping customers solve problems, improve processes, overcome obstacles, or in some other way make their businesses more successful. Now you can use their success to help further your own.

Fact is, it’s much more powerful to have your customers, rather than yourself, tell the world that you are a great company. Your prospective customers identify with your current ones. They likely face the same kinds of problems and are looking for the same or similar results. As a result, your message has much greater credibility.

Think of it this way: When you’re about to make a major purchase, where do you look for credible information about a product, service or company? If you’re like most of us you start by talking to people you know and trust. If they tell you they’ve had a great experience with a particular store, car dealer, carpet cleaner or lawn care service, you’ll likely put that company on your short list. Guess what? Your customers are just like you.

So how can you capitalize on your customer’s success stories? Here’s the basic process:

1) Identify those customers that have enjoyed outstanding results from your products or services. Hopefully, there are so many of them that you can pick and choose those with the most compelling stories.

2) Give them a call, thank them for their business and ask them to allow you to use their success stories in promoting your business. Point out that by doing so they also get positive exposure for themselves that may bring more business their way.

3) Get all of the details about the customer’s company, the nature of its issues, how your products and services helped, and (very important) the results they enjoyed. Also find out what, in particular, they most value about your company’s contribution. Ask for pictures, too.

4) Now have a competent writer prepare the story for publication. Typically this is an individual who is skilled in journalism, public relations and marketing. Note: you may have a former English major or other person on staff who can write a grammatically correct document, but they may not understand the nuances of editorial writing. You’re better off to pay a professional for their expertise.

5) Once the article is written, you have a number of opportunities to use the material to promote your enterprise. Here are a few:

• Advertising: Testimonials are a great basis for advertising your products and services, regardless of the media you use (print, Internet, email, direct mail, etc.). One approach is to use a customer quote such as “Acme helped us cut our time-to-market by 25%!” Naturally, you’ll include the customer’s name, title and company. In the accompanying copy, tell the reader they can view the entire story on your Web site, and give them the specific URL (www.acme.com/story, for example).

• Editorial: Many trade publications and other media that reach your audience are interested in case studies or “best practices” stories that have value to their readers. You may need to adjust the writing to satisfy the journalistic style of the publication, but many editors are happy to have you do their legwork for them.

• Sales Tools: Most salespeople are hungry for ammunition that can help set up a sales call, maintain contact with a promising prospect, or close a sale. To this end you can print a series of these testimonials and have your salespeople use them as leave-behinds, mailing pieces and as part of a proposal. You can also have them available to download from your Web site.

• Newsletters: Many companies make the mistake of filling their newsletters with content that their customers have little interest in. Frankly, few are motivated to do business with you because they saw a picture of the pie-eating contest winner from your annual company picnic. However, if your customer case study gives them an idea that can help them be more profitable, you’re more likely to get a call.

There are many more ways you can use your customers to help grow your business, but getting solid testimonial case histories is one of the most cost-effective and versatile. As a bonus, when you ask them for their stories you have another opportunity to make contact with your best customers and strengthen your relationship with them.

Is Your Company Marketing-Driven?

In recent years we’ve seen fundamental changes in the marketing landscape that create new challenges and opportunities for all businesses. The key shift is that buyers, not sellers, now decide how to get the information they use to make purchase decisions. This means that marketers have little choice but to get to know their customers better, forge stronger relationships with them and make sure that their products and services align with the customer’s wants or needs.

As Lester Wunderman, the “father of direct marketing,” puts it: “The chant of the Industrial Revolution was that of the manufacturer who said ‘This is what I make, won’t you please buy it?’ The call of the Information Age is the consumer asking, ‘This is what I want, won’t you please make it?’ ”

Which begs the question: How well does your company serve your customers to their great satisfaction and your profitability? Or, putting it another way, does your company focus on marketing? While many organizations say they are marketing-driven, my experience indicates otherwise. For example:

Some organizations concentrate almost exclusively on refining their production methods and channels of distribution. They believe that customers want the cheapest and most available product of its kind. Marketing, including researching the wants and needs of the customer, takes a back seat. The danger is that these companies may become the most efficient producers of something no one wants or needs.

Another approach is to constantly add new features or upgrade the technology of a given product. The belief here is that customers always want the latest-and-greatest version. This may be true if the product is something consumers desire and if your improvements are a good fit. But unless you stay tuned in to the users, you may be adding features of little value, or investing in a product whose time has passed.

Then there is the company that believes that the exclusive key to success is to sell, sell and sell. They’re convinced that customers will buy, regardless of their current wants or needs, if your sales force is aggressive enough.

Now, don’t get me wrong: There is nothing innately wrong with improving production efficiencies, creating better products or deploying a hard-charging sales force. On the contrary, any or all of these may be sound strategies. The problem is that, too often, these actions take place without a clear understanding of what the customer really desires and without considering all of the marketing mix components. Fact is learning about the customer, building relationships, making sure your products and services meet the customer’s wants or needs, and doing so better than your competition is the focus of a marketing-driven company. And in today’s increasingly competitive world, that is what every enterprise should aspire to be.

Have a marketing issue you’d like help with? Comments or Questions? Send them to njv@njvallone.com

Marketing Sweet & Simple

Experience has taught me that there are two kinds of people in this world: Those who complicate and those who simplify. You know what I mean. There are people who make things much more complex and difficult than necessary. They get caught up in tangential aspects of a process rather than simply defining and following the straightest path to their goal.

That’s not to say that marketing doesn’t deal with complex problems, people and markets. That’s a given. The problem is that companies often develop marketing solutions that are overly complicated and sometimes miss the point of the exercise entirely. As a result, the people who must execute the plan are bogged down with meaningless details that prevent them from working effectively. Or they simply circumvent the system and follow their own path.

The simple fact is that marketing plans should be as simple as possible. This means breaking down complex situations into a series of clearly stated goals, strategies and tactics. It also means that the written marketing plan need not be a 2-inch thick manifesto that winds up buried in the desk drawers of the highest echelon. Rather, it should be a concise document that lays out the process in easy to read and understand language that can be shared with everyone in the organization.

Frankly, all of this need not be so complicated. Let’s take the mystery out of marketing and review some simple truths that may help guide you in your efforts to keep your programs simple, concise, affordable and effective.

Simple Truth #1: People prefer to buy from institutions or individuals they know and trust. Common sense? You bet. But how often do we forget this elegantly simple truism and assume that customers will beat a path to our door just because we know we’re a good, honest business? Consider your own buying habits. How likely are you to make a major purchase from an unknown entity? If you’re like most of us you want some assurance that the company will deliver what it promises, that it stands behind the product or service if something isn’t right and that they’ll be there if you ever do have an issue.

Simple Truth # 2: The primary role of marketing is to make potential customers aware that you and your product exist, and to gain their trust so that they will consider doing business with you the next time they have a need for what you offer. That means that every contact with a customer candidate is an opportunity to build awareness and credibility. These contacts include face-to-face selling, customer service, advertising, public relations, networking and more.

Simple Truth # 3: People have short memories. Just because you introduce yourself to someone one time doesn’t mean that they’ll remember you when they need what you offer. That’s why you can never stop marketing. You must continuously remind people of your worth. Equally important is that everyone in your organization understands what it is you do that a customer will believe is valuable, and that they can communicate your message clearly and compellingly. Hint: Ask several of your people (individually, of course) what they say if someone asks them what your company does. If you get a variety of answers, not all of which convey your value proposition, you have some work to do.

Simple Truth # 4: People give much more credibility to the testimonies of those they consider peers than to anything a company says about itself. So if you’re going to gain credibility you need to prove your worth through actions that lead to satisfied customers. Then, whenever possible, ask these customers for permission to use their stories to help promote your business.

Simple Truth #5: The first step in successful marketing is to identify and target a market that provides the best opportunity for you to make an impact with your value message. This means defining the kinds of people who will realize the greatest benefit from whatever it is you can do for them. It also means you must be able to deliver in some way that differentiates you from your competitors. The difference may even be that you are addressing a market segment that the competitors have chosen not to serve.

Simple Truth #6: Everyone buys based on perceived value. However, each person defines value in his or her own terms, and it’s often more than just the initial cost. The trick is for you to understand how the customer defines value and then present your offering accordingly.

Simple Truth #7: People buy things because they wish to satisfy a perceived need. Most of these needs can be defined as a problem they want to overcome. Some examples: hunger, shelter, transportation, things that let them be more efficient at work or enjoy leisure more. We all have problems and we’re all looking for solutions. If you have the solution you can win the business.

Norman J. Vallone is a marketing strategist who helps businesses achieve their goals by advising, training and empowering them to strategically market their products and services. Send your questions or comments to: njv@njvallone.com