Seeing Your Products & Services through Your Customers’ Eyes

By: Janette Burke, ‘Your Marketing Magnet’

The best products and services aren’t sold – they’re bought.   That’s why you’ll never hear a customer say he bought a lemon at the used car lot.  No someone sold him that lemon – but hopefully not you or your business.  If you’re a good marketer, when it comes to time for the purchase, you aren’t selling anyone anything. Rather, you’re helping your customers select the right products or services to solve their problems, address their needs and fulfill their desires.  You’re helping them buy.  

As a result, you must devote the bulk of your marketing efforts to the steps that occur long before any money is exchanged.  These efforts involve targeting your customers, designing the right product line or packages and communicating your offerings in terms that directly address your customer’s wants and needs. Then when your customer is ready to make the purchase, all you have to do is facilitate a pleasant exchange and make sure he or she feels good about trading money for the right product or service you’re providing them.

This means you need to freeze-frame your business and study the products or services you offer from your customers’ perspective.  Start by telling “just the facts” about what it is you’re selling. For example, suppose you’re the owner of a lakeside resort.  You would want to list the number of cabins available, seats in the restaurant and row boats for rent.  You’d also want to include nearby shopping opportunities at the resorts Barefoot Bait Shop, summer youth camps and activities, winter ski packages and all-inclusive corporate retreats.

Now let’s consider your business.  What do you sell? How much? How many? And what times of the year/week/day do your products or services sell best?

What does your product or services do for your customers?  How do they use it? And how does it make them feel?  

How is your offering different or better than your competitors’?  How is it better than even a year ago?   

What does it cost?

And what do customers do if they’re displeased or if something goes wrong?

The faster you can answer these questions, the better you understand your business. And the better you understand your business, the more able you are to steer its future.

Founding Publicist Prime Time PR and Former Editor, PRtalk (Canada's only online marketing/PR magazine that she created to help small business owners, entrepreneurs, professionals, book authors and marketing directors understand the differences between advertising, marketing, PR, sales & promotion) turned marketing/PR coach, consultant, trainer, speaker, columnist, author and TV Personality, Janette Burke, creator of "The Magnetic Marketing/PR Process TM" (TMMPP) - her customized, 1:1 & group, cost-effective, step-by-step, guaranteed toget-results-now marketing/PR coaching and training system, is 'Your Marketing Magnet!'   

Visit www.yourmarketingmagnet.com to learn more about Janette and the many ways she can help you twinkle like the star you're meant to be!  And don't forget to download your complimentary copy of Janette's e-book, "67 Plus Ways to Promote Your Business & Make Money Today!" - Proven Tricks of the Trade for Catching Customers and Becoming a Marketing Magnet.  This handy 'Marketing Manifesto' comes complete with Janette's weekly Foolproof Marketing Hints Blog series, delivered directly to your inbox every Friday. Total retail value, $300.  Her gift to you absolutely FREE!

To get even more of her expert marketing advice, tune-in to "The Magnetic Marketing Moment"  - Janette's monthly marketing/PR segment - which airs from 12-2pm. the 3rd Monday of every month on That Channel's (www.thatchannel.com) flagship show, "Liquid Lunch" where she also serve as co-host to an array of impressive guests that you won't want to miss!  Podcasts available!