You can simplify business in 2 main activities: Innovation & Marketing
Peter Drucker

Recent studies reveal that consumers trust online reviews no less than the advice of friends.

In the United States more than 60% of people say they make their purchasing decisions on the basis of the evaluations of specialized websites.

But what is worse (or better) is that more than half of the people think that reviews posted on the internet are more credible than advertising campaigns. Do you understand the change that is taking place?

It’s clear that today it’s no longer possible to pretend, a communication strategy has to have a simple starting point: an excellent product or service and the best people to sell and represent it. Quality is the starting point. An exceptional product is a prerequisite. Excellent service is indispensable.

Is your problem your communication? or your products?

Remember, YOU are not the ones who define whether your product or service is excellent. It has to be your customer who fixes the standards of your products and services (thanks for the complaint!).

We must have clear in our minds what our “unique offer” is and how it differentiates us from our competitors.

Are you different?

We have to create products and services that make our customers fall in love; we don’t want services that are “acceptable”, nor services that respond to the customer’s desires. We want Lovemarks.

This is what Kevin Roberts, the first to develop this concept of marketing, says:
“Mere products (commodities) command neither love nor respect. Fads attract love, but without respect this love is just a passing infatuation. Brands attract respect, even lasting respect, but without love. Lovemarks command both respect and love. This is achieved through the trinity of mystery, sensuality and intimacy.”

Roberts says that to make a brand into a “lovemark” it’s necessary to have:

Mystery, Sensuality and Intimacy.

Take a look at the websites of many brands that consider themselves unique… many of them have nothing mysterious, no sensuality, no intimacy!

When your customers think of your brand, do they dream? Do they perceive sensuality, mystery and intimacy?

Your service and product has to create an “affective relationship” with customers; human beings are made of emotions, first and foremost, as far as one can believe, they make decisions on the basis of emotions (and often the most important emotion that guides a purchase is reassurance about fear).

Do you know why ex-post many market analyses turn out to be fallacies? Simply because decisions are often made not on the basis of rationality, but on emotion!

We must learn to sell “emotions”, “dreams”, “experiences” and “relationships”.

Your communication has to speak your customers’ language, not yours!

Put the customer in the centre!

Is market research so important? Most successful products that we adore today would never have been born from market research. Are Focus Groups so useless? They are focused on today, while you have to think about tomorrow!

The point is to analyze every “moment of the relationship” with the customer to make it excellent; it is necessary to reposition all the company processes and every interaction of our collaborators in order to attain customer satisfaction and in the creation of a unique relationship. Every act of your company is an act of marketing, each person who works in your company is doing marketing.

We must be unique; we must be different; we must have a clear and simple message; we must be different from our competitors.

Sacrifice wanting to be everything for wanting to be unique. Once again: focus, focus, focus

Simplify; if we had only 10 words to describe why our product or our company is unique, would we be able to do it? Would we be able to do it in a simple, precise, clear way?

Give your customers, in the way that you do your marketing, a clear reason why they have to buy your goods or services. Go on repeating it endlessly. Use case histories. Be coherent.

Instead of the 4 Ps of marketing mix (Product, Price, Place, Promotion), I am proposing you analyse the 4 Cs of high performance marketing.

Customer solutions, not products: Customers want to buy value or a solution to their problems.

Customer cost, not price: Customers want to know the total cost of acquiring, using and disposing of a product.

Convenience, not place: Customers want products and services to be as convenient to purchase as possible.

Communication, not promotion: Customers want two-way communication with the companies that make the product.

Do everything possible not to be average. Do all that’s possible to be different. Tell stories. Be unique. Be the first. I repeat once more: speak your customers’ language, not yours!

People are interested in themselves, not in you. They want to solve their problems, not yours.

Use case histories. Be coherent! Tell Stories!

Make sure that your positioning and your prices are clear.

Lastly ask yourselves: do you really love your product? Do your collaborators do likewise?

You CANNOT make others love what you yourself don’t love! From “The Path to Personal Excellence” by Simone Gibertoni