Don't Forget To Tell The Customer Why Your Product Should Be The Product They Choose To Purchase

Are you telling your customers why they should choose your product over that of your competitors?

At a more basic level, do you even know what makes your product superior to the product your competitors bring to market?

Decades ago this was state of the art

Most business owners give us a quizzical look when we ask those two questions of them then, as often as not, put on a sheepish grin and admit they’ve never really thought about the answers in very much depth.  Like most of us, they have simply assumed their products are superior to the competitors and, even worse, have, unconsciously, assumed the fact is self-evident to the client.

The two questions are important to consider from time to time because, especially in the modern marketplace, customer needs and desires shift more frequently than you might imagine.  If you are selling basically the same product you sold five or ten years ago you  are probably not meeting the needs of the marketplace in the same way you did then.  That may be better for you or, it may not be.

So, go ahead and seriously answer the two questions posed above.  If the answers you come up with aren’t what you thought they might be, it is time to reassess.  Sometimes reassessment means reworking your marketing approaches.  Sometimes it means actually making adjustments to your product to meet new market demands.  

First, the product.

By way of an example that holds true whether you provide a good or a service and, applies to nearly all industries, imagine you provide processing equipment for the forest products industry.  In this case we will assume a head rig (the primary saw in the mill responsible for initial breakdown of a log into slabs that will become lumber). 

You’ve probably seen old photos of very large trees loaded onto trucks or rail cars for shipment to the sawmill taken in the early days of the sawmill industry in the United States.

Well, the sort of timber seen in the old photos is actually, for the most part, considered to be undesirable in today’s marketplace because most mills can’t handle the stuff these days.  Sawmills able to routinely mill very large logs are few and far between.  In today’s world, what was once the standard is out of date.  



Modern head rigs use thin kerf blades to get more lumber out of each log

The lesson is that equipment, goods and/or services produced for yesterday’s markets will no longer be attractive to the modern buyer.

The same is true of nearly any product in any industry sector.  While the example above is a bit extreme for illustrative purposes, the principle stands; in the modern marketplace no one can afford to fall behind when it come to assuring the equipment, services or other products are those the customer wants.

The big advantage of taking a close look at the marketplace in terms of products offered in competition with yours is the assessment will lead you to gauge the areas your own business excells in.   

Modern marketing, or plain, old-fashioned traditional marketing; the need to present excellent materials with a strong message about your products remain the same.

It doesn’t matter how much money you spend on point of sale materials, catalogues, web sites and other technologies you might use to reach the customer base if those materials do not clearly, and almost instantly upon presentation, tell the customer why you should be the vendor of choice for the product you produce.

An excellent way to get potential customers involved in your marketing materials almost instantly, and positively, is to use headlines to ask questions rather than make statements.

By way of example, some modern sawmill head rigs can recover as much as 30% more value from a saw log than conventional technology can deliver.

A perfectly valid headline for one portion of your marketing materials in light of the above would be, “Recover up to 30% more lumber from each log you mill.”

Very thin saw blades (thin kerf) means more log turned into lumber and less turned into sawdust - an important new advantage in today's marketplace

But what if you say the same thing in the form of a question?

“Would 30% more lumber recovery from each log you mill enhance your profitability?”

The reader, without even thinking about the question thinks, “Well, of course a 30% increase in yield would help profitability.”

By asking a question you’ve caused the reader to make a positive statement in his or her mind about an important attribute of your product even before he or she begins to get into the nuts and bolts of the offering.

The entire task to be performed by your marketing materials is to convince potential customers you are the option of choice when it comes to purchasing product.  To keep your approach to the marketplace fresh you must constantly refresh your own knowledge, not only regarding your competitor’s products but your own as well.  Then, you can use the knowledge you gain through the use of conscious self examination to enhance the desirability of your company’s products in the marketplace.

 

Put Your Best Face Forward

Review your marketing materials.

If everything is stale, you really need to invest the time, energy and money needed to make it new again.  If your competitors are moving ahead can you afford not to?

The decision to update sales materials can be a tough one.  People are busy, budgets are stressed, and the economy is sluggish so you might be tempted to think that old package of sales materials has been “good enough” for a long time and probably will be good enough for another year or two.  “I’ll get to it later,” you might say.  You might even mean it.  But, then, think back to how often you’ve said exactly that in the past. 

Later is always, by definition, later.

Equipment In Action Is Always More Interesting

The problem is, the world you do business in, no matter what business sector you operate in, has seen huge change over the past ten years.  If you’re not keeping up with the times it’s likely your sales won’t either, especially if your competitors are keeping up.

One important note:  If you think your web site or other electronic efforts mean you don’t need to keep up with the times regarding your physical sales materials you should seriously reconsider.  The computer revolution has brought significant change to the art of promotion but, computers have not changed everything.  A well considered package including physical sales tools produced in conjunction with your electronic approaches can blow away a competing sales effort depending only on web sites, Facebook pages and other electronic media; as many still do not use Facebook, blog sites or other opportunities available as the result of the computer revolution.

Does your sales presentation need an update?

Take a look at your sales materials as though you are a potential customer for your own products and ask yourself a few questions:

·        When you give your materials to a customer can that customer, at a glance, “get” your major selling point?  Why should the customer consider your products.  If you haven’t told your best story it is time to revise your products.

·        Do your photos, and other illustrative materials, wherever possible, show action or are they static and uninteresting?

·        Do printed materials comport with the approaches you’ve taken on-line?  Inconsistency means a weakened marketing approach.

·        Have you kept up with the needs of the market and are those needs reflected in your sales presentations?  Even a 50 year old product can be presented as being “state-of-the-art” if it truly is; but you need to tell your customer about it.

·        All things considered, are you proactively telling your customer they have to consider you or risk falling behind in their own business approaches?  If not, you should be.  Leave nothing to the customer’s imagination; it’s up to you, not the customer, to do the work of convincing that customer they haven’t done their due-diligence if they haven’t contacted you before making purchasing decisions.

There is good news for the business looking to upgrade sales presentations.  Trade World Communications has been helping customers with the kinds of things discussed above for more than 30 years.  During that time we have seen:

·        The costs of developing new materials drop by 70 – 80% or more.  Graphics used to consume a huge part of the budget.  Computers have changed all that;

·        The range of options for approaching the marketplace increase by hundreds of percent.  Have you thought, for example, about doing a book featuring your business history and experiences in the trade?  Only ten years ago the costs would have been prohibitive for most;

·        Print costs have dropped exponentially over the costs to be expected even five years ago while print quality has seen enhancements nearly in equal measure.  Today you can print an entire book for two or three dollars a copy and, you can change it at almost any time at almost no cost.

The printed word is still central to a modern marketing effort.  Now is the time to determine whether or not your own materials are up to snuff.