Tag : marketing

  • So your big product launch failed …

    Posted Aug 11th, 2010 By in Clarity & Focus, Sales and adding value With | 1 Comment

    So, armed with a next-to-nothing budget and a half-way decent network, you tried to launch your new offering onto the world, and it just hasn’t taken off as you’d hoped.  Don’t feel too bad about it … I’m reading Buyology
    by branding expert  Martin Lindstrom, and in the first chapter he reveals that on average 8 out of 10 US product launches fail in the first 3 months. And that’s with a total marketing spend of $117bn! Lindstrom seems to be saying that they fail because they simply don’t understand why people really buy.

    So why did your launch not create the buzz you wanted, or indeed that sales? One reason that seems to come up often is that the message just wasn’t targetted to the audience well enough. They really couldn’t associate into the problem your offer solves, so they just didn’t see the value. That can come about because of a couple of related reasons – your list is too diverse, and you’re reluctant to use a message that excludes any of them.

    The trouble with that is, although the message is applicable to everyone on your list, it doesn’t speak to any of them directly. Isn’t it better to have one person say “Yes, that’s me, this person really gets me and understands how to solve my problem – I’m calling them right now!” than to have a couple of dozen put your message into their “Kinda interesting, might be some use, take a closer look when I get time” folder? Because we all know that messages that go into that folder only ever come out at the annual slash-and-burn e-mail clear-out, don’t we!

    So go on – pick one individual your product solves a specific problem for, and target a message just for them. There’s probably others just like them, or close enough to get that “Yes! That’s me!” response. And they probably hang about in the same places – so a message targetted at your pinpoint client will be seen by others who you can help too. Isn’t that a far better way to add value in the world than a ‘could-appeal-to-everyone-won’t-excite-anyone’ spamogram?

  • The power of the demo

    Posted Aug 9th, 2010 By in Clarity & Focus, Sales and adding value With | No Comments

    Peter Thompson’s wonderful “TGI Mondays” blog this morning really got me thinking – have a read / listen & see what you think.  It’s all about the power of actually demonstrating your offer.

    What it got me thinking was: how can I demonstrate what I do without actually doing it?  It’s a challenge many of us face, if our “product” is actually a service.

    One way that’s suggested by marketing consultants, especially for coaches etc, is just to “open the loops” – in other words, make people aware with your questionning that they have a problem.  Done well, the fact that you’re asking the right questions implies that you know what you’re talking about, and that you can lead the prospect to the solution, if they just become a client.

    I have some ethical challenges with that.  How often do you see an invitation to attend a webinar, teleconference, or even physical seminar that promises things it doesn’t deliver?  “Find out how to get rich trading stocks & shares” the headline promises; and when you’ve sat there for a couple of hours, you can see that there’s all sorts of stuff you’ve been doing wrong – but you still don’t know what to do right.  For that you have to attend the full weekend seminar, “at only x thousand dollars”.

    Now don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying that people who’ve spend years working out how to help people make money on stocks / buy property below market value / lose weight / stop smoking  … even decide what opportunities to go for ;) … should give away all their valuable knowledge for free.  Far from it.  What I’m saying is we have to be very careful not to promise that our demo sessions will provide actual solutions if they won’t.

    When I do talks, I generally don’t promise to show people how to focus – I promise to tell them why focus is important for business success.  If they want to know how, they’ll need to hire me.  And if it’s the kind of gig where the audience expects to go away with some how-to, it’ll be billed as “the essentials”, and they’ll get the essentials, valuable information but by no means the full programme.  It’s all about integrity – if someone’s giving up their valuable time to be at your seminar or on your phone call, you really do have to give them what you said they’d get.

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