I would like to step back from posting an article today to get feedback from you on how you feel about your marketing initiatives and answer questions that are important to you.

This is an opportunity for you to get questions answered and get information on how you might initiate or improve on your current marketing platform and initiatives.

 We would like to hear from you about your individual needs, concerns and problems you may be experiencing in relation to your particular business.

None of us have all the answers but our experienced staff will do its best to answer your inquiries and get you the information you need to make informed decisions.

Below are some general questions we would like you to think about and add any inquiry or comment you may have in the comment section. All inquiries made are on our secure servers and held in the strictest of confidence.
 

1. How do you fell about the overall performance of your Marketing Department?

1. Do you think there is room for improvement?

1. What areas would improve if you could?

1. What would you like to implement if it was cost effective for you?

Local area marketing gives your brand the opportunity to leverage your messages to create a solid community of loyal customers who live or work close to your market area.

Local area marketing provides the best opportunity for your business to connect with your customer base to show them that you actively support and give back to the community and are concerned with your customers’ needs by promoting workshops on product and service related topics and by posting relevant content to educate, inform and answer questions regarding your products and services.

It’s knowing what messages to market and where to market to your customers based on local knowledge and trends; this is the key to Local Marketing that turns campaigns into success stories. A great resource for obtaining this knowledge is within your organization-your employees.

Promote your team.  People like to do business with local people and be consistent, reinforce your marketing messages, have a local marketing program in addition to your stand-alone campaigns.

Advances in integrated technology has provided business the tools to directly market through their own websites. Marketing Automation allows businesses to use their site as the center for conducting all their marketing initiatives which makes your business more efficient and gives you more control over your initiatives, saves time, and reduces the need to look outside for solutions.

Part of your integrated platform solution for your site must include mobile. Fully integrated sites attract more visibility and therefore more traffic compared to using different solutions and vendors to fill your needs – And with mobile it is widely expected that in the near future, local searches will account for the bulk of all mobile searches annually. If you don’t already have a mobile solution integrated into your website's platform you’re losing ground every day.

The following article by ZOG Digital fills us in on just how important mobile is to have as part of your total marketing solution.

William Cosgrove
Bill Cosgrove Straight Talk
 

Mobile: The Future Of Local Search

 

 

People have little interest in purchasing a bed; what they want is a good night's sleep.

Some folks would sleep on a cardboard box if it meant they’d wake up refreshed—that’s what makes it a real problem in need of a solution.

Entrepreneurs must go beyond simply building products; they have to sell what their product will allow customers to do.

If they don't, you know they’re inexperienced. Take a look at this quote from investor Dina Routhier:

The most common thing that pegs an entrepreneur as an amateur is when they come in and immediately start talking about their amazing new technology, and forget to start the discussion with, “What big problem in the market am I trying to solve?” If they don’t start with the problem, then I know they are green."

Let’s look at some examples of how benefits help sell products.

"Lose 30 Pounds in 30 Days!"

(Thanks, Mega Shake!)

As an armchair observer, it's all too easy to scoff at over-the-top late night infomercials. And yet, these ads are making sales, often far more than that super neat-o new web app everybody talks about but nobody wants to pay for.

In fact, the infomercial industry is still growing. It's even gone on to eclipse the TV industry itself:

Why bring this up? If there is anything that infomercials are good at, it's selling benefits. For one, they understand that people can be coaxed, not driven.

Claude C. Hopkins once said, "Prevention is not a popular subject, however much it should be." It is far easier to sell around existing desires than it is to create desire.

Infomercials might all sound the same, but they work because they sell solutions that are perpetually in demand. It’s similar to how the most successful tech startups take a problem that already exists / has always existed, and make their solution easier, faster, cheaper, or more accessible.

There's also the effective use of selling a system. "30 pounds in 30 days" is appealing because you know what you're getting. Magic diet pills use this dishonestly, but with legitimate workout programs like P90X and Insanity, the language is the same. Nobody actually wants to buy a workout program, they want abs and better conditioning in a reasonable time-frame.


 

What's In It For Me?

Let's step away from infomercials and observe the effectiveness of selling benefits in the "real" business world. This stuff works, sans sleaze.

Apple understood this when they released the first iPod. MP3 players were nothing new, and the technology trounced CDs. The problem was marketing; the right pitch hadn't been made to explain just how much better customers’ lives were going to be once they owned an iPod.

How do you think Apple decided to frame the magic of the iPod? Around its technical prowess, or what customers could do with it?


 

The message was persuasive because, in the words of Seth Godin, it was all about "Me, me, me. My favorite person: me." Gigs of data have nothing to do with me, but a pocket full of my favorite songs certainly does.

The irony is that those who most often admire Apple and Jobs—those in the startup community—tend to have the biggest problem with selling. Many a HackerNews thread is filled with vitriolic commentors who insist that he who lists the most compelling technical features wins.

This has become such a problem that Justin Jackson recently wrote a very popular article reminding software developers that they aren't "normal" in relation to their customers:

Increasing the technical challenge while creating a product does not increase the chance for more sales. This surprises us. We get an idea for a thing, think about the technology we’d use to build it, and get excited. 

“I could build this on the Twilio API!” “I could learn that new CSS framework!” “I could use this new tool I just purchased!” 

The problem is that all of this is focused on us, the creator, and not on the customer, the consumer.

There's a natural inclination for craftsman to want to talk about the craft.

But remember, customers generally won’t care about the cogs that make your product turn. What they want to know is, "What's in it for me?"

A Better Version of You

In a well-stated case for solution selling, Belle from Buffer argued that people don't buy products; they buy better versions of themselves. As Jason Fried noted:

"Here's what our product can do" and "Here's what you can do with our product" sound similar, but they are completely different approaches.

As with many aspects of marketing, it all comes back to having a compelling proposition of value. This is what many miss, and it’s why you'll see ill-informed comments like this crop up from time to time:

I'm one of those developers who thinks that marketing in general is 'scummy'... I'm willing to acknowledge that there can exist marketing that is not scummy but it's hard for me to think of real world examples... I love building things that people enjoy using but I hate sales and marketing."

Apparently, you're supposed to sit in your basement and build things without ever trying to sell them to the people who need them the most.

Bullshit!

Take a look at the homepage of a great company like Bidsketch:



It reads an awful lot like the "benefit selling" we've discussed throughout this article, but to my knowledge, you won't find founder Ruben Gamez on late night TV exclaiming, "But wait, there's more!"


 

The “selling” here is beneficial to me as a customer: I find out what you provide and what I can do with it without being forced to slog through details I don't need.

As an example of what not to do, I once came across a SaaS app (that wasn't made for developers) that stated in their sub-heading, “Proudly made with Ruby on Rails.”

“What's Ruby on Rails, a level from Mario Kart?” Ninety-nine percent of customers won't know and simply won't care. It’s like shoving the schematics in their face before they even have a chance to decide, "Is this what I need?"

Kudos to many bootstrapped companies, who tend to deeply understand the value of selling benefits (perhaps because they actually have to make money).

Freckle doesn't even mention the word "software" before you're reminded of your biggest problem when using time-tracking apps.



SerpIQ knows prospects will say yes to their question. Once the benefits are clear, they learn about how and why it's a faster and more accurate tool.


 

Features Still Matter

Obviously, letting features "tell" still matters a great deal—once you've sold a prospect on what you can do for them, the details ease their decision-making.

Take buying a car; what you need is a car spacious and safe enough for your family, but when it comes down to a split decision, you might select the one with the heated leather seats. Until the benefits are obvious, stuff like this is just eye-candy.

Features can often connect the dots and put the benefits into a greater context. There are two important ways they do this:

• Justification: Esurance uses comparative pricing to explain why their insurance is cheaper (through features). The savings are gained from their lean operation, which was "born online." Once the benefit is sold, features are used to explain how you'll make it happen. If a hosting company says your site is totally secure (hooray!), features show you how and why that claim is a guarantee. Sell the benefits first, then highlight the great features you offer to close.
• Differentiation: Describing your point of difference means elaborating on your features. We often tell Help Scout customers about how most help desks outsource their email parsing. Ours is in-house, which allows us to do email integration and voicemail support that others can't do (only after the "help desk headache" issue is addressed does this feature become important).

My personal persuasion hero, Claude Hopkins, has a useful tactic on how to correctly frame features and benefits:

There is one simple and right way to answer many advertising questions. Ask yourself, “Would this help a salesman sell the goods? Would it help me sell them if I met the buyer in person?”

Would you, making a sale in person, talk about the titanium frame or the nickel-cadmium alloy mix of your brake pads before addressing the benefits to a customer?


 

Remember that by not selling on benefits, you're doing a disservice to customers. Give them what they want by showing them why your product is that "one thing" they've been searching for.

 

One must always be looking to innovate and try new things. The old saying that the early bird gets the worm holds true in most cases. Always be experimenting and measuring your marketing initiatives and remember some of the most lasting initiatives are right in front of you, you read about them and do nothing.

Don’t miss out on opportunities because you want to play it safe and take a wait and see attitude. I am sure this is not what got you started or made you successful.  Some of the most cost effective and lasting initiatives are here now-take action!

Make the commitment this year to experiment and really look for and listen to fresh new ideas and just maybe you will find more success because success will most often not look for you.
William Cosgrove

Related articles:
Know These Must Have Social Media Marketing Tools
Introducing “AutoPhoto”

• Innovate. AT&T took advantage of a brand new type of opportunity on HotWired. More recently, SAP was the first marketer to join the Forbes BrandVoice program and they are continuing to see some of the best results today.
• Know the trend setters and early adopters in your market. Just like Gary’s first email blast, Pinterest delivered astounding results for early adopters. Often the best opportunities are right in front of you—you just need to see them through a marketing lens.
• Be different. Did you already miss the best opportunity? Whatever you do, don’t just follow the masses! The unexpected nature of something completely new breaks through the filters we have all established for marketing. For a bit of inspiration in a stodgy B2B space, look up Maersk on Facebook. Or if you prefer, consider Red Bull’s marketing.

• In social media, marketers that started early had a head start building an engaged audience.
• In content marketing, early adopters learned how to connect with their audience effectively (and got a head start on SEO as well).
• In online advertising, early movers found the hidden gems. Working with a B2B advertising client about 10 years ago, we helped a niche site create their online ad offering. They became one of our best performing advertising partners for years.

• The sharing economy.
• The Internet of things.
• The proliferation of inexpensive sensors.
• The brand new insights, segmentation, personalization and (most importantly) services this information and connectivity enables.