What? Well this thought popped into my head when I was on
a webinar with Erick Simpson from MSPU. The
topic of the webinar was marketing managed services and Erick stated that you
should always market pain, not products or services.
So you should market the pain, headache. Sell the cure,
aspirin. Do you do this now? I realize I am covering the same thing I did just
a week ago in Marketing isn’t sales, but this is a new spin. Your marketing
should be getting people to understand they have a problem. Sales will diagnose
and cure.
Many companies want to grow their business and are
looking for effective marketing to generate new customers. Are you actively marketing
to your existing customer base now? My guess is many of your customers have
Headaches and don’t know you sell aspirin. Always take care of your existing
base, before you move on to new markets.
Would you say this is more about making them think they have Problem X, even if they don't really have it, or working with them to see if they really do have Problem X and showing them how you can help them?
ReplyDeleteThe issue I have with how it's phrased in your article above is that if you're "getting them to understand" they have a problem, you aren't actually working with them to determine if they DO have a problem. You're just trying to get them to think they have one, so you can market your services. It might just be semantics, but a large part of marketing is semantics.
Astrogirl,
ReplyDeleteGenerally I'm not into "faking" people into buying, but you raise great points. Marketing is able to both alert people to issues they need to know about, (create demand) as well as communicating common issues. (filling demand) So you can help people understand they are not in compliance with some regulation, and you are doing them a great service. Most TV drug company ads are the opposite of this, they scare people into looking for issues and problems.
Steve