Creating a Marketing Plan That Will Grow Your Small Business by Cory Gabel - HTML preview

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Within each sector we can identify the most consistent “main wants” for customers of these businesses. We call these top-line wants “triggers”. In general, most people in need of a certain type of service or product have the same triggers.

Once we determine a trigger, we can then dive deeper to understand what that trigger means for a specific business. The information we gathered through our surveys while assembling our Perfect Customer profile will help us.

A) Basic Need

B) Sector Trigger

C) Business-Specific Wants

Let’s illustrate with an example for Bizzit Marketing.

A. The Basic Need

“I need help marketing my business.”

B. Sector Trigger

Businesses of our type are in the “professional” sector. One of the top common triggers for professional-sector businesses is:

“I want the delivered results to match my expectations.”

In other words, when a customer decides to do business with a professional service like us, one of their top wants is that the professional will deliver on what is the agreed-upon goal.

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C. Business-Specific Wants

Easy, right? Ah, but not so fast…how can we get more specific with that “want “as it relates to our business? After all, knowing that our customers expect us to fulfill their expectations doesn’t really shine any light on what that specifically means to them. What is it they want us to “deliver on”?

The results of our survey indicated that most of our clients and prospects considered these factors to be the most important in terms of marketing their business: 1. I want a comprehensive, professional marketing plan for my business.

2. I want all aspects of my marketing and branding (logo, website, brochure, business card, social media) to work together.

3. I want all the day-to-day and technical details to be handled.

Now, we’re getting somewhere. We know the top line trigger is that we should deliver on what we say we will. We now also know specifically what our Perfect Customer considers to be most important: a plan, an integrated brand, and day-to-day management of the details.

Let’s continue, and look at another common Trigger for the professional service sector: B-2. Sector Trigger

“I expect responsiveness and I want consistent communication with the company.”

“Responsiveness” came up as one of the things our current customers appreciate most about us. So, we’re already on the right track there. From reading their comments, we also gained some additional insights into what the word “responsive” really meant to them: 34

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C-2. Business-Specific Wants

1. I want someone to respond quickly when I have questions or need to discuss something.

2. I want to feel that my business is a priority, regardless of how large it is.

3. I want to learn and be coached along the way, so I understand what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.

Now that’s a whole lot more meaningful than the blanket statement “I want the company to be responsive,” isn’t it?

A few more examples will further illustrate this point. The way we’re describing it here makes it seem fairly simple. Actually, it’s not. This takes some time, and requires you to carefully execute the previous steps. You can see now why asking the right questions on your survey is critical.

In the examples below, we’ve taken the step of looking at the top line Trigger, and distilling it down to the specific wants relative to that business. (Remember - a listing of business types and their sector, as well as sector-specific triggers can be found on our website).

They Need:

My air conditioner is broken. I need someone to fix it.

They Want:

I want it to be fixed fast. I want to understand why it broke, and get some kind of guarantee it won’t break again. I don’t want to get gouged, but I’m not really sure how much this service should cost. I don’t want to be treated like an idiot. I want the service person that comes to my house to treat me fairly and courteously.

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They Need:

My family and I need to eat dinner and I don’t feel like cooking tonight.

They Want:

I want to go to a restaurant where my kids can find food they enjoy and is also good for them. I want the staff to be friendly. I want it to be casual enough for families so we’re not self-conscious if our kids get a little loud. I also want it to feel just a little upscale so my wife and I still feel like we’re getting a bit of a night out. I want it to have a bar so I can have a beer with dinner, and my wife can have a colorful martini if she’s in the mood.

They Need:

I need an attorney.

They Want:

I want an attorney that has dealt with elderly care issues before. I want them to be sensitive to the fact that for the first time I have to make decisions for my parents, and it makes me uncomfortable. I need them to have very good advice. It’s my parents’ money, so I need to be assured that they’re only being billed for what is essential. I want them to explain to me all the various things we need to take care of on behalf of my mom and dad.

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Get the idea? Working through this process will give you invaluable insight into what truly drives the purchasing and decision making behavior of your Perfect Customer. The next step is to take that knowledge and apply it to the solutions that your business offers. If you can not only meet their wants, but exceed their expectations, then you’ll have a business that is poised to thrive and grow.

Ready to innovate?

Understanding “triggers” will give you

invaluable insight into what truly drives the

purchasing and decision making behavior of

your Perfect Customer.

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Engineering “Exceptional”

A quick plug: we love the author Seth Godin. He’s a marketing guru, a great writer, and he continually offers some of the most succinct (and meaningful) takes on marketing in today’s world. While a bit of a longer read than our Planner, his book Purple Cow deals entirely with the concept of innovating your business. Uncovering how your business can be “unique”,

“exceptional” or a “Purple Cow” may be the most powerful thing you’ll learn in this entire planning process.

Be Exceptional

Your goal is to offer your customers something with such tremendous value that it makes your business stand out. This doesn’t mean you have to revolutionize their entire lives. You don’t have to create the next great automobile, social networking site, or weight loss formula.

You could simply be the only dry cleaner in town that picks up and delivers its customers’

clothes for no extra charge. Or you could be the lawn maintenance provider in the community that only uses all natural pesticides and fertilizers and still gets stunning results. Or your Spanish tapas restaurant may make the best Sangria this side of the Atlantic.

If you crafted your customer survey carefully, you’ll already have some strong insights as to what your Perfect Customer would consider exceptional. They’ve literally told you how you could innovate or enhance your business in a way that would make them want your product or service more.

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It’s Not About Tricking Customers

It’s important to note that we are not talking about manipulation or using smoke and mirrors.

Often, business marketers can mistakenly think that good marketing is akin to pulling the wool over the public’s eyes, and duping them into becoming a customer. This tactic very rarely works. (Aside from the movie-preview business, which routinely tricks you into seeing bad movies!)

As we get into specific steps of how to engineer “exceptional” so that you can go beyond needs and deliver on your customers wants, keep this in mind: you’re not looking for ways to

“appear as if” you’re addressing those wants. Your business is going to innovate solutions that actually do address those wants.

Example: Life In Balance

Life In Balance is a personal chef business which creates healthy, gourmet meals for busy families. By working through the Triggers/Wants section of the BizzitPlanner, the owner has concluded that there are four major wants he needs to innovate for in order to deliver exceptional value to the company’s clients.

In the following example, you’ll see that Life In Balance is taking the basic needs of their prospects and seeking to deliver value on a completely different level. When you do this exercise for your business, it’s important not to edit yourself too much. Let your imagination run wild and don’t get bogged down (yet) in answering your internal questions of “how am I going to do that?” For now, think big, and think bold. The name of the game is “innovation”.

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Perfect Customer Want #1

“I want a chef service that will prepare 3 nutritious and great tasting meals per week for my family.”

How Life In Balance Can Meet Expectations

By preparing great tasting, healthy food.

How Life In Balance Can Exceed Expectations

Our chefs are all culinary school graduates. Our menus are meticulously planned with the aid of our on-staff nutritionist. We can also cater to any food allergies or dietary restrictions our clients may have.

Perfect Customer Want #2

“I want to feel confident that only organic or well-sourced ingredients are being used.”

How Life In Balance Can Meet Expectations

We use only the freshest ingredients and use organic foods whenever possible.

How Life In Balance Can Exceed Expectations

We pride ourselves on using the freshest ingredients available. We partner with local farms and food markets to bring fresh, seasonable foods to the dinner table. To source the best foods and ingredients requires us to constantly adjust our menus and suppliers. We update our website daily with a detailed ingredient list of every dish we prepare, so our clients know exactly what is going into their food, and where it came from.

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Perfect Customer Want #3

“I want to feel less rushed and stressed out during the work week.” (Notice how there’s an opportunity to meet a “non-food-related” want here.) How Life In Balance Can Meet Expectations

We do all the cooking so our clients don’t have to.

How Life In Balance Can Exceed Expectations

All meals our prepared in our kitchens, so there’s no mess or fuss in on clients’ home.

We can deliver our meals on the day they are prepared, or they can be frozen for convenience and delivered once a week. Choosing menus is easy by working with one of our menu consultants. Over time, we learn each client’s preferences, and can make recommendations for new dishes we think they’ll enjoy.

Perfect Customer Want #4

“I want to feel and look better as a result of eating better foods.”

How Life In Balance Can Meet Expectations

Our healthy and nutritious meals contain less fat and preservatives.

How Life In Balance Can Exceed Expectations

We see healthy eating as the center of a fit and happy lifestyle. In addition to our chef services, we provide our clients with personal consultations with our on-staff nutritionist. We also have 41

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collaborative partnerships with professionals in personal training, homeopathic medicine, massage, chiropractic, and weight loss counseling.

If Your Answer is “Low Price”, You Could Be In Trouble Occasionally, readers will reach this section and think, “Yeah, this all sounds great, but all my customers really care about is the lowest price”. If that is true, in all honesty, your business could be in trouble. A consumer choice made entirely based on price is always the result of non-differentiation.

From your customer’s point of view, they do not believe there is one single thing you do or offer that is adding any additional value to the base product or service. Your business is simply meeting a need. Whether that’s actually true or not doesn’t really matter. It’s what they believe, and thus they think only a fool would pay more.

Customers will pay a higher price if they perceive there is an added value. Value is perceived by how many of their “wants” you’re addressing, not needs. Anyone can address needs.

Summary Of How To Engineer “Exceptional”

• Identify your business sector (visit our listing online, bizzitmarketing.com/triggers)

• Identify 2-3 triggers

• Using surveys and profiles, determine how those triggers relate to the specific “wants”

of your prospects

• Get creative and engineer exceptional solutions and services to meet those wants 42

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So... What Does Your Business Do?

Let’s recap how far you’ve come in this BizzitPlanning process. You now know who your Perfect Customer is. You have a crystal clear understanding of what they want. You’ve taken steps to structure what you offer so that it not only delivers on their needs and wants, but does so in an exceptional fashion.

Now you can sit back, and watch the cash register ring, right? Well, of course not, what fun would that be?!

It’s time to roll up your sleeves and tell your Perfect Customers and Prospects who you are and what you’re up to.

We’ve all heard of the salesman’s “pitch”, or the infamous elevator speech. At its most basic level, it’s a direct and compelling answer to the question: “So... what does your business do?”

It’s time to roll up your sleeves and tell your

Perfect Customers and Prospects who you are

and what you’re up to.

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Authors Assaraf and Smith describe a two-step process by which to consider this question.

It divides your answer into two parts, and by doing so creates a dynamic and interesting synopsis of what your business does.

This is not marketing-speak. Rather, it is a conversational answer you’d actually give to a real person that asks you this question.

1. Paint a Picture That Focuses On a Problem

You’ll start with a phrase like “You know how…?” or “Have you ever…?” What follows is a description of the most important need and want your business addresses.

2. Solve That Problem

After setting up the problem, it’s time to deliver the goods. Think of your business as a super-hero that’s come to make the pain go away. Begin with “Well, what we do is...”, or “We solve that problem by...”

Sound simple? It is, provided you’ve done your homework up until this point. Here’s the “What Do You Do?” answer for Bizzit Marketing. We make the assumption we’re talking to a small business owner or employee, essentially one of our Perfect Prospects. They ask, “So, what does your business do?” Our answer:

You know how as a small business owner you always feel like you should be doing more with marketing, but you just never quite have the time? Most small businesses realize that marketing is THE KEY to their growth and future success, yet those tasks always end up at the bottom of the to-do list. You’re busy running your business: managing the product, the service, personnel, operations, accounting - you name it. You just don’t have the time to 44

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manage a marketing plan, or worse, you may not even have a plan.

Well, we solve this problem by helping small businesses with all aspects of their marketing.

We help them create a comprehensive marketing plan, we design and develop all the tools they need to have a consistent brand, and then we manage the day-to day aspects of the plan. For less than it would cost them to add one minimum-wage employee, we devote an entire team of marketing and creative professionals to essentially BE their marketing department.

It puts our clients ahead of 99% of all other small businesses. They have a crystal clear plan for how to market their business, and a team of affordable experts to actually make it happen.

Let’s be clear about the goal of our “What Do You Do?” answer. If you’re a small business owner, our research, surveys and profiles told us that it’s very likely you were nodding your head in agreement as you read (or heard) the first paragraph. We were describing a need that you have, and hopefully getting the response: “that’s exactly what I’m facing! They feel my pain!”

If you got bored, nodded off, skipped ahead...then we already know you’re not our Perfect Customer. That’s okay, we’re not offended. You don’t need us, we don’t offer anything you need.

But if you were interested...

You’re now waiting to hear how we can solve your problem. Our answer is filled with all the things our business does to meet what we uncovered as the top “wants” of our Perfect Customers. For us, it’s about 3 things: the plan, a consistent brand, and handling the details.

We also provide a provocative benchmark for cost to begin laying the foundation for affordability and value.

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As we close our answer, our Perfect Prospect should be thinking, “This sounds great. How do they actually do that?”

In marketing terms, we’ve gotten that prospect “off the elevator,” and onto our floor.

And we can’t stress this point enough: for those that weren’t nodding their heads in agreement, then they’re simply not our Perfect Prospects, so they’re ultimately not our concern.

Always remember - if you’re trying to speak to everyone, you’re speaking to no one. Your Perfect Prospect is the only audience that matters.

Conversations First, Snappy Marketing Copy Second There are no short cuts. It’s important to work through your “So, What Does Your Business Do?”

answer because that’s where you’ll quickly detect any holes or flaws in what you’ve developed thus far. Before we can start writing snappy headlines and taglines, we need to be 100% sure that your pitch connects to your Perfect Customer.

Writing, reading and tweaking your answer out loud is a great approach to getting it right.

Test it out as much as you can, but be careful on whose feedback you let influence your approach. If your business sells plumbing supplies to contractors, you ideally need to see how your pitch works with that crowd. The input of your girlfriend or Uncle Bob may be helpful, but only if they can identify with your Perfect Customer.

If you’re trying to speak to everyone, you’re

speaking to no one. Your Perfect Prospect is the only audience that matters.

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Your Marketing Core: The WooMoo

If you’ve read any marketing books or attended business courses, you’ve heard the term

“Unique Selling Proposition.” A USP aims to quickly define what makes a product or service unique; what needs it meets, and what benefits it provides.

Generally, a USP refers to a specific product or service. Thus, your business could have many USP’s that apply to different products or categories. Still, you need a similar, concise, wants-driven tagline that encapsulates your entire business. We call it your WooMoo: What Makes YOU Unique. (We tweaked the acronym so we could pay a little tribute to our favorite purple cow from Seth Godin...)

The WooMoo is not to be confused with an attention getting headline. Different marketing tactics will require different approaches. Sometimes you will need to break through the clutter with a memorable image or headline. But that’s not exactly what your WooMoo is all about.

Your WooMoo is the ultra-concise version of your “So, What Does Your Business Do?” answer.

It can’t explain it all, or get too specific, but it should reflect the very core of what your business means to your Perfect Customer.

Your WooMoo is going to be your most important marketing asset. It will become integrated into every outbound message your company has from business cards to television commercials. You’ll use it on your website, your e-mail signature line, your on-hold phone music...everywhere.

So it needs to be rock-star good.

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Concise and Effective Does Not Equal Clever

In the movie Fight Club, Edward Norton’s character meets Brad Pitt’s indelible Tyler Durden character for the first time on an airplane. Durden is a no-nonsense individual, and has no tolerance for anything he perceives as insincere. He’s in the moment, sometimes narcissistic, and completely unimpressed with Norton’s banter. In short, Norton bores him.

Think of you and your marketing as Ed Norton and Durden as your prospect. He’s bored before you even open your mouth. He’s heard it all before. Now, back to the movie...

During their conversation, Norton gives Tyler one of his witty takes on life. He awaits Durden’s approval; feeling pretty proud of himself. Durden looks at him, completely deadpan, and answers, “Oh I get it, it’s very clever.”

It’s not the reply Norton was hoping for. He sheepishly looks at Durden, and replies, “Thank you.”

Tyler smirks and says, “How’s that working out for you?” (Meaning, how is “being clever” working for you?)

The scene may be the ultimate metaphor for marketing, as well as the creative people and businesses that produce marketing. A business (or their agency) thinks they’re clever, telling a good joke, getting a prospect excited. The prospect on the other hand, agrees: “Yeah, that was clever. Good job.” The business and agency think they’ve nailed it. They wait to see tangible results of their brilliance.

Meanwhile, the prospect isn’t acting on anything. He was entertained or possibly amused.

You were on his radar for a blip, but now you’re not. That’s okay; he’s not upset or disappointed.

You haven’t let him down, because he simply doesn’t care.

You must speak directly to what your Perfect Customer wants. Nothing else matters.

Otherwise, you’re just delivering fluff, entertainment or intrusion.

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Writing Your WooMoo

As you write and develop your WooMoo, keep these principles and tips in mind. There are always exceptions to these rules, but unless you’re a genius, stick with these: 1. Writing a great WooMoo will take longer than you think. Just deal with that.

2. Shoot for Goldilock’s length of “just-right”: 10+ words is probably too long, 2-3 is probably too short.

3. Don’t be overly technical.

4. Do not try to impress anyone with how smart you are a) or how funny you are

b) or how hip you are

c) or how pop-culture savvy you are...

5. Your WooMoo is about your business, not a specific product.

6. Do not start it with “We.” (Non-profits or charities, you potentially get a pass on this one.) You must speak directly to what your Perfect

Customer wants. Nothing else matters.

Otherwise, you’re just delivering fluff,

entertainment or intrusion.

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7. Potentially start it with “You” or “Your”. Doesn’t always work, but it’s better than “We”!

8. Avoid cliché terms like value, solutions, quality, service. Do those terms mean anything to you anymore when you hear them in marketing? Didn’t think so.

9. Don’t pose your WooMoo as a question. You may not get the answer you’re looking for.

Some great WooMoos to inspire you:

Don’t Dream It. Drive It

Jaguar

Just

Do

It

Nike

Think

Different Apple

The Antidote for Civilization

ClubMed

Say

It

With

Flowers

FTD

The First in Financial News

CNBC

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Creating a compelling WooMoo for your business is akin to the Pilgrims reaching Plymouth Rock. You’ve crossed the vast ocean of ideas and analysis, and you’ve taken a long, detailed look at what your business actually does. You’ve arrived on the shores of the New World, a place where your business will grow and thrive.

Your WooMoo is your foundation. Take it seriously. It’s not just a tagline; it’s an identity. It’s a flag on the shore that tells your Perfect Customer who you are and what it means to them.

Your WooMoo

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Telling Your Story

It’s time to go and find our Perfect Prospects and start telling them about what you do.

Begin by asking yourself three questions:

1. Where do I “sell” to my customers? (your turf) 2. Where can I communicate w