Last week was Part 1 of our Beginner’s Guide to Marketing (for people who don't like marketing).
This week, I’m going to show you how to demonstrate your value at every distance from your ideal customer. One simple question at a time.
If you feel stuck when someone asks what you do (or when you have to write something for your website, or a LinkedIn post, or any number of marketing tasks) it usually comes down to just not having the right words for the situation, or the audience.
So here’s how to visualize it, using our Marketing Rangefinder framework:
- If someone needs you, but doesn’t know who you are, they’re FAR from your business, and they need to know you can do the thing they need done.
- If they know you but haven’t bought yet, they’re CLOSE, and they need to be made more comfortable buying from you by seeing your tradeoffs.
- If they’ve bought or are buying, they’re HERE, and they are measuring how you’re over-delivering on their expectations.
- If they’ve worked with you in the past, they’re CONNECTED, and you can shape what they share about their experience with others.
Each distance has its own question to answer. So that when an opportunity arises, or you’re stuck having to tell someone what you do, you know what to ask to know what you should say.
Let me show you how this works:
Let’s say you need something done around your house, and so you set off to Google to find a service provider.
But the results page is filled with businesses giving you slogans or taglines in their headline, or some vague marketing jargon.
When what you wanted to know is, “Do you do the thing I need done?”
- The lesson: In your own marketing, the question you need to ask yourself when someone doesn’t know about you yet is, “What do they need and how can I show them I do that very specific thing?”
Because instead of clicking on the slogan, you click on the first result that actually tells you what the business does.
Once you land on their website, though, it’s just a giant list of services. It looks like they do a little bit of everything and you’re wondering if they could be good at all of it.
When what you want to know is, “Does this business actually know what they’re doing?”
- The lesson: In your own marketing, what you need to ask yourself when someone knows you but hasn’t bought yet is, “What do they care about, and how can I show them I care about that, too?”
Instead of working with the company with a buffet of services, you went with the one that explained their process in detail and showed you that they care about the same things you do.
But once you started working with them, they basically ghosted you, rarely checking in and making you wonder: “Am I actually getting what I’m paying for?”
- The lesson: In your marketing, the question to ask when someone’s buying or has just bought is, “How are they measuring my work and how can I over-deliver?”
So, the next time you needed something similar done, you worked with someone else who was more responsive and proactive. And after that project finished, this new company reached back out.
They reminded you of how well the project went, and what got accomplished. And the next time someone asked you about it, you essentially repeated what the company reminded you that you’d experienced.
- The lesson: In your marketing, when someone’s worked with you before, you want to ask: “How can I remind them of the value they received?”
So this is everything summed up, your Beginner's Guide to Marketing in just four questions:
When you have a marketing opportunity and the person, audience, or prospect you’re talking to is:
FAR (They need you but don’t know you): Ask, “How do they describe what they need, and how can I make it clear I do that and easy for them to find out more?”
CLOSE (They know you but haven’t bought yet): Ask, “What do they care about and how can I show them that the way I do my work prioritizes the same things they do?”
HERE (They’ve bought or are buying): Ask, “How will they immediately measure my work, and how can I show them it’s working?”
CONNECTED (They’ve worked with you in the past): Ask, “How can I remind them of the progress they made and shape what they share with others?”
If you don’t like marketing, that’s okay. Try not to think of it as marketing, but as merely demonstrating your unique value at a distance.
To people who need what you do and who want to work with someone like you, who will see your value immediately, and will tell others of their experience.
Isn’t that easier?
Next week, in Part 3, we’ll give you examples of what to say at each distance.
Kelford Inc. is the marketing team that’s never at a loss for words. If you’re struggling with what to say and where to say it to attract ideal clients, we’ll show you the way.