Do you spend all your time and energy creating a brand? Or do you go for the best price? Well neither is the right answer.
It’s a trick question. Because it’s nothing to do with the price. It is nothing to do with your branding.
Yes, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Pepsi, Barclays bank, all those kind of brands, they can spend gazillions and keep advertising, agencies and marketing agencies employed for centuries to come I should think.
But for us, that is pretty much a waste of time and money.
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It’s important to have your price in position. It is important to have your branding in position. And to be consistent in your brand. But more important than that is value.
You see, if you are thinking of the price, and you are thinking of your brand, you have got it back to front, you are thinking of it from your point of view.
Whereas the people that spend their money, pay your salary and make you your profits are your customers. Yes. Remember them. Your clients and your customers. Whichever you want to call them. They only look at it from their point of view.
So for them, when they come along and see your price, it’s the first time they are seeing it. They are unlikely to go off and compare you to every single other company.
If there were tens to compare to, only one of those ten is the cheapest. And the tenth one, the one with the cheapest prices is not the one that gets all the business. So there must be something different.
What about on the branding? There are some companies that are very slick. That spend a load of money, even small businesses.
For instance — this video would have been made by a professional videographer. They have a super slick website, they’ve company vehicles, will be all beautifully signed written.
Their staff may have spotless work wear or uniforms. Their offices are beautiful.
And then maybe someone else who works from home, he looks a bit scruffy. However that person who works from home, who looks a bit scruffy and has the older vehicle still has customers. So it can’t be that. Can it? No.
It’s Value
Its value. What value do the customers perceive they are going to get from you. So it’s not what you give them. It’s what they get.
The only people who can tell you what the value is of your product are your customers and your potential customers. So why don’t you ask them?
How do you ask them Jon? Good question. Pick up the phone and ask them. Ask them a couple of questions that get the answer, or get to the question that you want. Just simply ask them.
They are your customers, they already trust you. They spend money with you. So these are the ones that I would recommend you ask.
Ask them what of all the companies they can buy from, Why do they buy from you? Is it, if they are not sure of an answer, if they don’t come up with an instant answer, have a couple of choices for them?
Say is it the price? Are you after the lowest price, are you after a middle price, is it something else? Depends what you do. Is it the service, is it the speed of delivery?
Is it the speed of service? Is it the way we do something other? Is it because we got new vehicles and lovely uniforms? Ask them. They will tell you and then you will know.
Now what you’ll find is once you get a pattern of what people like about you, suddenly you are finding your USP.
You’re finding the reason why everyone buys from you. And I bet you, I bet you anything that it is not what you think it is.
Because people look at you in a different way to you think they look at you. So until you ask them, you’ll never know.
If you don’t, if you are scared of phoning people up or if they are overseas, or you don’t have phone numbers, you can send them a survey.
You can send them an email written just to them. One at a time. Not blanket email. Just one at a time. Pick your top ones and say, just ask them, say personal email, not a business one — I just want to ask you, can I ask you 3 questions? Give them a couple of questions and then a 3rd one. Let them write an answer.
Ask Personal Questions About Service and Price
So say, you know why is it that you buy from us, what are, just say with all the choices. And on the 3rd one, what is the thing that we do best in your eyes?
You’ll find that people, first of all they’ll give you language they use, the words that they use rather than your industry speak or the way you talk around the office, or around your business. So you’ll find patterns with that as well.
And then, once you incorporate those words, and that commonality into your marketing, you are already half way inside people’s minds.
Because that was what attracted them. And you didn’t even know. Okay. So this is my birthday present to you.
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“The 71 Ultimate Marketing Tools”
By the way, put this in your calendar, because I’m going to have a birthday every year, August 23rd. Every single year. If you want to send me any presents, by all means, email me. I’ll give you the address, although by time you listen to this, you might have missed it. Ah, don’t worry. You can get me something next year. But that is my present to you. You must must must give customers what they are looking for. You must solve their problems. Not yours, okay. That will fix everything for you.
Tuesday Toolbox Tip
Now it is a Tuesday, despite being my birthday, so its time for a Toolbox tip, and today it’s for an app. It’s called WinStreak. And I’m pretty sure it’s free, it’s certainly available from the, from iTunes for iPhone, I own an iPhone so I am sorry about you android people. Why have androids, I do not know but my son has one, my daughter has an iPhone. But so whether it’s on yours, don’t know. But WinStreak is a kind of to do, a success app. So once you have your to do list, on WinStreak, each day you can enter, say 3 to dos.
And then tick them off when you do them. And you then will get to see how long you can go on a winning streak of doing 3 to dos or 2 to dos and getting them off.
Do you see what it is, a win streak. So it’s a winning streak of completing to dos.
So set yourself an achievable target that has a slight edge. So if you are aiming for 2, if you find it easy to do 2, add 3. Don’t add 4 or 5. Just add 3. If you do 3 for a couple of months, add 4. You will progress towards your goals. There you go.
And I’ve got a further gift to you. This is for tomorrow, because as you know every Wednesday, we have an expert interview. Tomorrow is one of the best bloggers on the planet.
Now I mean it. If you read any of this guy’s articles, they are absorbing, they are exactly how a top blog article should be done. If you listen to his interview, you’ll find out how he had a million, million readers of one post he wrote as a guest post on someone else’s.
His name is Jon Morrow. If you have not heard of Jon Morrow, google it. Jon is spelt J-O-N. But just listen to what he has got to say.
He’s one of the most inspiring people, I’ve ever come across. I’m not going to tell you why. He has a special reason. You got to listen tomorrow. I’ll be back with some more tips on Thursday.
