Your Marketing Needs to be Concise, Well Articulated and Powerfully Stated!
Buyers no longer have to rely on limited sources of information about a product or service. The landscape of business now involves increased competition, information, choices, and more resistance. It has made buying cycles longer. There is now price competition that didn't exist before. Products are becoming commodities and a lot of the marketing messages are identical. Because of all of this, a wedge has been created between the seller and the buyer. This wedge is called "The Confidence Gap."
"The Confidence Gap" is the consumer's inability to determine whether any of the products or any of the services are any better or worse or any different than any of the others. This creates a big problem. What you need to understand is that people, who will be buying from you, have all these different choices. It's very difficult for them to determine whether you are any better or any different from anyone else. So your marketing goal needs to be to narrow the Confidence Gap and restore the consumer's trust and confidence.
How Do We Fix This Problem?
The questions you may be asking yourself are "How do I figure this out?" and "How do I fix this problem?" Go to the business section of any bookstore and you'll find all kinds of books on this topic. You'll find things like "Better Customer Service." The theory is if you have better customer service, you'll have more customers. The problem with this philosophy is you must have a customer in order to give them service. You can't just say, "I've got great customer service." It doesn't work that way; you must have a system that will drive the customer to you! One of the things you might hear business gurus say is, "If you have more sales training and if you are better at sales, then you'll be able to get more customers." The problem with that is, again, you've got to have prospects in order to use your sales skills. If you look at all the sales training books and all the sales training seminars, they are all short on advice in this particular area, which is: "How do I find someone to sell to in the first place?"
There is another way that business books and business gurus tell you how to overcome this thing we call the Confidence Gap. "Use advertising tricks and techniques." "You can trick people through misleading advertisements to call you or come in." For example, I saw a car ad that said, "Pay no tax on all new vehicles." Do you think that sounds like a pretty good deal? If I weren't paying any tax, then I'd probably save a couple grand. The problem is when you looked at the fine print, it said, "Customers responsible for all sales taxes, state, and local. The dealer will pay for the inventory tax." This is a sales trick. It does nothing to build trust and confidence. Instead it builds contempt, hatred, and suspicion. The result is a widening of the Confidence Gap when the goal of the advertisement should have been to narrow it.
These examples reveal a problem. We used to have the days of simple selling, now we have The Confidence Gap. You, as a business owner, need to overcome this in order to be successful. You need to find a solution to the problem.
How Do I Get The Customers To Actually Want To Do Business With Me?
I don't know if you are familiar with Napoleon Hill; he wrote the book, Think and Grow Rich. He had a saying that went like this: "It is as useless to try to sell a man something until you have first made him want to listen as it would be to command the earth to stop rotating." Do you believe that? Think about it; if they don't want to listen, trust me, they are not going to want to buy what you are selling. They are going to view you as a pest. That's where the difference between sales and marketing come into play.
In sales, what you are doing is trying to make people want to listen to you in a sales situation. What we're presenting is a marketing program that does the job of making people want to listen. It prepares the buyers so they will come to you and you will have an opportunity to sell. Sales skills are still very important, but your time is used more productively in closing sales rather that chasing them down.
Marketing Is The Tool You Must Use To Bridge The Confidence Gap
Marketing needs to be concise, well articulated, and powerfully stated. It is low or no pressure. Marketing is one-way communication. It's not afraid of rejection. It's not obtrusive. People can review marketing at their own pace, when it's convenient for them. And, if they aren't interested, they can ignore it altogether. No commitment. That is why we need to talk about a marketing program.
In the Success 101 system, we teach and implement a Marketing Program that helps businesses overcome the Confidence Gap. It accomplishes this by addressing two points-the Inside Reality and the Outside Perception.
The inside reality is everything your business does that makes you valuable to your customers. It is what gives you a competitive edge in the marketplace. It is all of your skills, your passion, your systems, the way you conduct your business. The outside perception is how customers and prospects perceive your business. It is the ideas and impressions consumers gain from your direct and indirect communication with them.
If you would like more information on how ICON marketing services can benefit you please call us to schedule a consultation. 661.324.4266.
