by
Roberta Guise, M.B.A.
Roberta
Guise, MBA, works with experts, small business owners and
professionals who want to be extraordinarily visible and sharpen
their marketing edge. A marketing consultant and speaker, she owns
San Francisco-based Guise Marketing & PR. You can reach her at
415-979-0611or Roberta@guisemarketing.com.
Recently
I bumped into an old business friend, and after hugs and how-are-yous,
I asked what he was up to. He launched into a detailed explanation
about processes, systems and new paradigm shifts. After about
three minutes of listening I told him I needed to get going. We
hugged again and parted ways.
I
didn’t have a clue as to what he was talking about. It’s
awkward to feel your eyes glaze over when you don’t understand
the person in front of you. It’s worse if you’re the one
others don’t understand.
Concepts
Need Legs To Stand On.
If
you sell a service you know how challenging it is to quickly
convey what you do and why someone would want to buy from you. If
you sell products, lucky you, and remember that you’re really in
the service business.
A
service is an intangible, or a concept. Unlike products — which
you can touch, feel, smell, see, or hear — you can’t use your
five senses to grasp a concept. Concepts require thought, tap into
our intellect and knowledge, need a context, and demand a whole
range of other mental frameworks for us to grasp what’s being
communicated. But just when you think you’re conveying your
concept’s real value with absolute clarity, you realize it’s
clear as mud.
Discussing
product values and features is a relative breeze. Next time you’re
in the kitchen read the label of your dishwashing liquid. Mine is
Palmolive (brand name) dishwashing soap (what it is, the feature).
Its value? Tough on Grease, Soft on Hands — two big benefits
bundled into a single phrase that’s convinced millions of
consumers to buy, and to come back for more after they discovered
the product delivered on the promise.
Unless
you’re an architect, doctor, attorney, real estate broker or
someone in a profession that’s easy to find in the Yellow Pages,
you need to know a few tricks for boiling down your processes,
solutions, benefits and features that are as easy to grasp — and
buy — as Palmolive dishwashing soap.
Positioning:
The Holy Grail of Marketing.
Finding
just the right words to describe who we are, what we do, who
benefits and, most important, why anyone should care, is to many
the Holy Grail of marketing. Experts have written about it since
the beginning of marketing time, with Al Reis and Jack Trout
perhaps the most well-known with their classic book,
"Positioning: The Battle for your Mind."
Positioning,
the authors tell us, is to look inside the customer for their
perceptions of need and solutions. And in our incredibly noisy and
cranky world, the simpler the message the better. To get into the
prospect’s mind and understand what their hot buttons are, we
must, well, get into their mind. You goal is to end up with a
statement, namely, your positioning, that tells readers and
listeners what you do, who you do it for, and what’s in it for
them. The order in which these points appear doesn’t really
matter.
A
Methodical Approach.
I’ve
developed and use this basic 3-step process with my clients for
crafting a compelling positioning that any reasonable adult can
understand. Use this process whether you’re creating a pithy
slogan or tag line, or a longer statement for adapting to your
various promotional pieces.
First,
ask your favorite customers to describe the value they get
from working with you. Ask for descriptive words. Also ask how
they feel about your products or services.
Then,
do a "brain dump" and write down your own
descriptive words that convey your value, your services and
also describe you, the person. If you have a partner or
employees, write about the personality of your company.
Finally,
write a short paragraph using the strongest phrases and words
that your customers and you thought of. Give yourself bonus
points for creating a slogan or tag line for attaching to your
logo.
For
example. At a typically noisy networking event, Sue Young of ANDA
Consulting in Colchester, Vermont, introduced herself. "I
prevent software development projects from failing," she told
me. Fascinated, I probed further. "Well," she continued,
"I save companies millions of dollars by finding out early
whether project objectives are realistic and actually add value. I
was a database administrator for 15 years, so my consulting work
is mostly for relational database projects."
Now
I don’t know a thing about big database administration. But
because Young spoke in plain English and painted a vivid picture
about preventing software project failures, I got what she does,
and her target buyers for sure know how they’ll benefit from
working with her.
A
client of mine is a blast consultant who, with her team of
engineers, designs buildings and structures to withstand the
effects of terrorist attacks. From an engineering standpoint, her
work focuses on how a structure will behave in the event it is
attacked. I created a value statement for her that reads:
"People
have a right to feel safe in any building they enter."
With
this phrase, my client is telling her customers that the ultimate
objective of her blast mitigating designs is to protect people
from a terrorist explosion. We are always careful to weave this
core value into all the company’s marketing materials, whether
they be printed, on the Web or spoken.
Practice,
Test, and Practice Again.
After
you’ve written your statement or slogan, practice a brief spoken
version. You want it to slide off your lips when talking to people
who don’t know you. See how they respond. Get their feedback.
Make changes and test again. Repeat as needed. How will you know
it works? You’ll find your listeners hanging onto every word you
say and wanting to know more.
Visit
www.guisemarketing.com/articles for more articles and tips
to help you with your marketing challenges and increase your
visibility.
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