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Marketing | Why Choose You? | Jo Sealy

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Jo Sealy

Many small business owners often feel that being able to stand out from the crowd can be a challenge.

The truth is however, that without differentiating yourself  – regularly and consistently – you may well find yourself buried amongst your competitors, vying for attention.

In order to plan how you will attract the right kind of business for you, there are some key things you need to ask yourself and put in place to give your business the best chance of being heard:

Why should they choose you?

What makes you different and more importantly, what does that mean to your potential client?  You’ll only know what makes you and your business stand out by understanding the typical needs of your client intimately,  understanding what is happening within your market and by studying the competition.

The Right Who

Trying to target everybody is a fool’s game and as a business owner you will want to quantify every penny of your marketing budget.   It’s best to choose a target market – by demographic, geographic, affinity or association.  By choosing groups to target, they’re easier to find and it will be far easier for you to measure your success.

Lead them through the buying decision

Take baby steps, not big buying leaps.  Not everyone wants to buy immediately.  They may need convincing (this is why it’s important to know your target market), or may wish to feel reassured and convinced over time that your product or service is what they require.  Or they may just need a lot more contact with you before they take the leap to buy what you are offering.  Plot your client’s typical journey and create and send marketing messages in the appropriate format that will address each leg of that journey.

Prove your case

You know what we mean here – testimonials, case studies, photographs, videos.  There’s nothing like a really happy client to help sell your product or service.   Make sure your testimonials reflect various aspects of your range of goods or services so that when read as a whole they give a good rounded view of your company.

Follow up, follow up, follow up

Many business owners simply give up after contacting a prospect after one attempt.  They figure that if the prospect wanted to buy or use their service they would get in touch.   That’s naive and not very proactive.   Think of our busy lives and the amount of messages we receive each day, your prospect might want to explore your services but get diverted by more pressing emails, an urgent job or a family issue.

Those businesses that have a systemised follow-up approach to attracting new business, ideally using a variety of suitable media to attract attention, will be the winners here.   If at first you don’t succeed …

 

Jo Sealy runs To Market, a marketing agency for creative, food and small business. www.to-market.co.uk

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