For businesses (small businesses especially) the impact of advertising in newspapers, magazines and outdoor media is fading. People are overwhelmed with information and are slowly learning to tune out traditional ads. But, wait there is great news! People don’t tune out the recommendations of their peers, friends, and network.
In fact while consumers can:
They don’t ignore their friends. Research has shown that 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations. The word-of-mouth of customers will make a new book a best seller, turn a “independent film” into a box office hit, have a waiting list at a restaurant or have parents lining up at toy stores to buy that limited edition. And word-of-mouth will help you sell your products and services—if you know how to create it.
Remarkable is where is starts. Remarkable means something worth making a remark about. It’s about building things into your product or service that are worth talking about. Not about adding marketing or hype to your product or service at the last-minute, but understanding that if what you’re offering isn’t remarkable, its invisible.
If someone chooses to talk about your product or service, I then call that a “referable experience” because that’s what we share, our experiences with a product or service. How it made us feel? Every experience that makes a customer excited to talk about you has some combination of the following ten elements:
These ten elements are included in your effort to make good on what you promise and what you deliver.
I recently visited a restaurant that had this promise, “The Coldest Draught Beer In Town!”. Now there’s a few elements at work here. First, is the anticipation of downing not just a cold beer, but the coldest draught beer in town. Secondly, if they deliver on their promise you’re going to tell your friends about the coldest draught beer in town and that is the element of evangelism.
Question: What element(s) does your product or service have?
Indispensable Marketing takes a process approach to developing and installing your small business marketing.