Small Business Marketing Sucks

An article of mine has been published on SitePoint.com.

SitePoint is an online media company and information provider targeting the Web professional market, specifically web developers and designers. Its website contains a vast variety of tutorials and articles coupled with a vibrant and well-informed community of over 400,000 members. It was named the third most popular eBusiness website and is currently the 749th most visited web site in the world.

The article is titled, So What Exactly is “Value” and How Do I Use It to Sell? It can be found here.

A company I worked for had a particular manager that I had never met. Despite that, I felt like I did know him because, whenever his name came up in conversation, the typical reaction I heard was, “He’s a real a$$*#%! hole.” After about the fifth or so time of hearing those exact words, I had begun to develop a very distinct impression about him. Like it or not, he had been branded.

When we think about commercial brands, we tend to think of a name, sign, symbol or slogan… anything that is used to identify and distinguish a specific product, service or business. But on a more basic level, a brand is an identification mark… such as when using a branding iron to mark an animal to indicate ownership.

That “mark” can also be a symbol of disgrace or infamy, as in the Bible when it says that “…the Lord set a mark upon Cain” after he killed his brother, Abel. A mark or brand can also stigmatize, accuse or condemn, or brand as disgraceful, as in the case of the a$$*#%! hole manager.

Companies often confuse their brand with the logos, trademarks, signs, symbols or designs that identify the product or services they sell. But your brand is a distinctive identity that is associated with the product, service or organization. Brands are more than just names slapped on your products by the marketing department. They embody the value those products have in eyes of your customer. Or at least they ought to.

To most companies, their brand is centered around their product. But brands are more about the promises you deliver than the products sell. The promise of value (and the delivery on that promise) is at the heart of it. So true branding is about selling a promise of value.

But promises are serious business. Making too many or changing them frequently raises questions about the character of the individual or organization doing so.

Companies can say (or promise) whatever they like about their organization, product or service, but what they say is typically what they want the buying public to believe about their organization, product or service. But what you do proves what you believe, not what you say. And if what you believe about your company is not the same as what you want the public to believe about your company… well, that’s the definition of a hypocrite.

And if what you think the buying public believes about your organization, product or service is not what they actually believe, well, that’s called denial. (Or stupidity… you choose.)

Want to know what your real brand is? It’s whatever word your customer uses to complete the following sentence:

“Oh, [Company Name]… that’s the company who _________________________.”

How would your customers answer that question?

I once worked door-to-door sales for a lawn care company. A common response I heard from homeowners after I identified myself was, “Oh… you’re the company who constantly calls and calls and won’t leave me alone.” More than one customer told me that they refused to do business with us because of this – despite being satisfied with the quality of lawn care.

Remember how I said that a brand can also be a symbol of disgrace or infamy?

The owner of a small restaurant in Cherryvale, Kansas, recounted how she and her husband had always thought their restaurant was unique because they were the nicest restaurant in town. But, by surveying their customers, they found out otherwise. In her words, "We were surprised to learn that, instead of being the 'nicest' restaurant in our small town, it was known as the 'birthday' and 'anniversary' place. Why? Because it was the nicest place in town. So now we market it that way, always collecting data from our customers as to when their birthdays and anniversaries are, and sending them cards for a free piece of pie or box of candy when they dine here for their occasion."

As you have probably noticed, your brand is closely associated with the value you provide to your customers. The people in Cherryvale valued this small town restaurant as the “birthday” and “anniversary” place because it was the nicest place in town. And its owners delivered on their promise of value by making sure it was the nicest place in town.

Determining what your customer values and then delivering on that value is what true branding is all about… regardless of whether it’s a professional or a personal brand.

In a SpongeBob SquarePants episode, Mr. Krabs sees a group of tourists outside his restaurant, the Krusty Krab. With dollar signs in his eyes, he hurries out to entice them inside. As they scurry past, he shouts:

“Don’t you want to give me your money?”

Needless to say, they continue on without giving him so much as a moment’s notice.

Whether it’s busy tourists or busy decision makers, no one cares about what you want or what you’re selling. That’s where a strong value proposition comes to the rescue. Jill Konrath, author of Selling to Big Companies, defines a value proposition as:

...a clear statement about the tangible business results customers get from using your product, service or solution.

She goes on to say that a strong value proposition “always includes movement,” and describes that as:

increase	cut	improve	save	free up	revitalize
accelerate	reduce	enhance	squeeze	eliminate	shrink
strengthen	improve	grow	balance	minimize	maximize

So what types of things can you increase, enhance, shrink, improve or revitalize? That depends on what you’re selling, and to whom. Since my company sells advertising, we can increase, improve, strengthen and grow things like:

• revenue, profit, sales
• prospects, leads, customers
• customer base, market share
• return on advertising investment

So a “winning value proposition” for us could be:

We help businesses acquire new customers and increase their market share, without wasting money on advertising that doesn’t work.

Once you’ve created a strong value proposition, use it in your phone calls, emails and voice mails, in your print and web copy, and at your networking meetings. Go ahead, you give it a try.

I’m conducting sales training all this week, and one of the things I emphasize early-on is selling on value, not price.

Now that’s much easier to do because we’re not selling a product that we paid x amount of money for, or that the customer can get from the store down the street. We sell advertising, and the value in advertising rests on one thing, and one thing only: Will I make more money in additional revenue than I will spend on this advertising?

So if you sell a service, if you are an account, an attorney, a web designer, or an architect... then here’s how you can sell on value and avoid the low-cost limbo.

Value comes down to whether or not your customer thinks your widget is worth $5,000. All you need do is show him how it will make his life a little bit better. If your customer says your price is too high – he’s right. Unless you’ve proven value, any price is too high.

In order to sell on value, you must understand the relationship between price and value. Cost must be discussed and agreed-upon, but never outside of the context of achieving your client’s objectives and what he’s going to get back in return for your services.

Let me give you an example by asking a question: Is $2,000 dollars a lot of money?

To answer that, you will immediately try to contextualizing it in your mind by comparing that $2,000 to something else... like your paycheck. Or your mortgage. If you live in California, $2,000 might not seem so expensive compared to what you're actually paying for your mortgage each month. If you live in another state, you might think otherwise. The point is, we all try to put a dollar figure into context to determine if we think it’s “a lot of money” or not.

But the actual thing we should be comparing that $2,000 to is not something like our mortgage. We should compare it to what we are getting back in return. When your prospect is stuck on price (or starts talking about his “budget”), he’s looking at what he has to spend, rather than what he’s going to get. If your prospect hasn’t considered what he’ll receive in return, he’ll be forever focused on price instead of value... unless you help him see it differently, that is.

Sales and marketing gurus are always talking about value — that in order to have a successful product or service, we must “create value” for the customer. But what exactly does that mean?

While the theory is absolutely correct, the concept of value is subjective and nebulous. What is valuable to one person may be completely irrelevant to another.

And to complicate things even more, we tend to be myopic about what we think is valuable about our product or service. It’s like trying to read the label from inside the bottle... what we think is valuable and ought to cause consumers to buy is often not the case. So it would seem that determining what’s valuable to your customer is not as easy as it sounds.

Here’s a simple definition:

If you are increasing or decreasing something that your customer wants increased or decreased, then you are creating value.

So... what value are you creating today?