The Edge Marketing

We live in a world of noise – not just auditory noise but total sensory overload. Everywhere we go marketing messages are shouting at us day and night. Hundreds of TV and radio stations, thousands of newspapers, magazines and books, millions of ezines, brochures, and leaflets, billions of emails and web pages. And unfortunately much of it is junk so it’s hard to find the important stuff.

You have got to cut though the noise and get people to see and hear your message. If people don’t see you or hear you then there is no way they are going to buy from you. If people don’t visit your web site, read your articles, brochures or sales letters, attend your seminars etc., why even bother to produce them.

Now I know this is going to sound blindingly obvious, but most important ideas are just common sense things that we have stopped doing. The key to Getting Attention is to give people what they are looking for. Find a bunch of people with the same problem keeping them awake at night and offer to take away the problem. People buy for two reasons only:

Desire for Gain or Avoidance of Pain.

The one that motivates us most is avoidance of pain, removing a problem. What problem does your product or service solve? Look for people who have that problem, market to them and you will get their attention because that problem is on their mind, they are thinking about it they are looking for a solution so they are much more likely to see your message. This is what gives pay per click its potential and why it’s so important to build tightly targeted mailing and ezine lists.

Write these words on a large poster and stick it up on your notice-board.

Get Attention – Be Remembered

Now once you have their attention it’s a lot easier to keep that attention and even get them telling their friends about you, provided you get them to Remember You. This is so important but so many businesses do nothing to be remembered. The cost of acquiring a new customer is about 10 times the cost of repeat business so it’s crucial that you do everything to make sure that customers remember you and get into the habit of doing business with you.

Consider the Lifetime Value of a customer. One purchase may be worth $100, but if that customer comes back to you just 4 times a year for the next 5 years their value is $2000 – 20 times their first purchase. If every year that customer refers another 2 customers to you who each spend $400 a year, at the end of 5 years that one customer will have introduced 8 customers with a total value to you of $10,000. Now if maths is not your strong suit you will just have to trust me on this, but if each new customer also referred 2 additional customers each year, you would have a total of 121 customers with a 5 year value to you of $48,400. Nearly £50,000 dollars from one $100 customer.

What you are doing to make your customers feel really great about doing business with you. Be creative. It’s not what they buy it’s who they introduce that makes the difference. How can you overwhelm people with the quality of your service, massively exceed their expectations and give them real value, especially value that doesn’t actually cost you much.

One day I was booked in at a small 3 star hotel. As I approached the door, a lady welcomed me and opened the door for me. As I waited at the reception to check in, she brought over a tray offering me a glass of sherry or brandy while I waited. As soon as I had checked in a porter took my bag and escorted me to the room showing me around. 15 minutes later the reception called just to check that everything was OK. This was an inexpensive 3 star hotel yet they delivered the kind of service that even 5 star hotels struggle to match. The result; I became an evangelist selling their hotel to friends and contacts at every opportunity because they massively exceeded my expectations.

So the marketing process is – Get Attention to acquire new customers by giving people what they want, - Be Remembered by massively exceeding expectations so they do your marketing for you by recommending you to their friends.

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