A friend who works as a business consultant told me about his marketing challenge:
“My prospects don’t know what they don’t know,” he said. “They don’t know they need me.”
I hear that a lot. Business people get hung up on this idea: “How can I sell them my product or service when they don’t know they need it?”
My response:
Stop worrying about what prospects DON’T know.
Start focusing on what they DO know.
Here’s an example from my business:
At MarketVolt we have a feature called “Dynamic Content.” This allows users to show or hide content in an email based on recipients’ interests.
Many of our school district clients use the feature. They create a long newsletter with items about a variety of topics — news for grade school parents, updates for high school parents, topics that interest soccer moms, announcements relevant to marching band dads.
When our clients use Dynamic Content to create and deliver that newsletter, each recipient receives a customized version of the newsletter with content that’s relevant to them. If you’re a soccer mom, you’ll see that soccer topic; if you’re not, you won’t. Same goes for each item. You’ll see it if it’s relevant, you won’t see it if it’s not.
When we introduced Dynamic Content, none of our clients or prospects knew they “needed” it.
If I said, “We now offer Dynamic Content,” many would have shrugged — even as I described the feature.
But we don’t care about what they don’t know. We focus on what they do know.
Here’s what they know:
Parent engagement is critical to school districts. They want parents to open and read the email newsletters they send.
Many parents tune out when newsletters are too long and filled with lots of items that are not relevant to them.
Creating newsletters is already time-consuming. Creating countless personalized versions by hand (i.e. separate versions for different grade levels or interest groups) would be too time-consuming and costly.
We say to school districts, “We understand your needs. We understand your pain.” Then we say, “We can help you do better. We can help you engage parents with more relevant content so they’ll open your emails and read them. And we’ll enable you to do this without jumping through hoops and burning precious time and resources.”
That appeals to them. So they ask, “How do you do that.”
Then we describe “Dynamic Content.”
They often reply, “Wow. I didn’t know you could do that.”
Now they know. And they care.
I share this not to brag about MarketVolt (although we’re proud of that Dynamic Content feature). I share that to emphasize a key marketing lesson…
Prospects rarely know that they “need” a certain product, service or feature that you offer.
That’s not a problem because…
Your marketing should not focus on you and your service. It should focus on your clients and their aspirations and needs.
If you can identify what they need and what they fear, you’ll frame a true story in which your products and services fit.
Tom
MarketVolt
p.s. We help businesses figure out what they sell and how. Then we help them identify and connect with their target markets so people will view you as a welcome guest and listen to what you’re saying. If you want to discuss how to make it happen for your business, email me at tom@marketvolt.com. For no charge and no strings attached, we’ll discuss with you how you’re building email lists, generating new leads and generally finding and connecting with prospects.
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