Notes About Business

Every business owner wants to sell more of their products and services. Before this can happen, it is important to understand a few simple but powerful marketing strategies for building trust and desire among your prospects

Below are three simple marketing strategies that will help you to attract and retain new customers.

Strategy #1: Define Your Buyer Personas

Buyer Personas are simple customer biographies based on real-life data. They help you understand the wants and needs of your specific customer types.

Maybe you have heard of the Soccer Mom or the NASCAR Dad. While these well-known buyer personas may seem almost cartoonish, keep in mind that they were specifically marketed to by both the Republicans and the Democrats in past elections.

The key to defining your buyer personas is to look at your customer data and find ways to group common characteristics. Break your customers down into well defined buying categories as best you can. You don’t have to be perfect here, just do the best job with the current data you have.

What type of characteristics can a Buyer Persona contain? Anything that is relevant to your business including gender, business type, age, hobbies, or occupation.

Strategy #2: The UVP

Defining your Unique Value Proposition (UVP) is the first step in clearly identifying how your products and services are different from the competition. If you can’t define some unique feature or benefit that makes you stand out, your customers may default to the only other option – price.

Don’t have anything that makes you unique? Then it’s time to create something from scratch. Take your time and be prepared to alter some of your services in order to support your unique way of standing out from the crowd.

Take a look at your competitors. What do they excel at? Can you find a way to improve upon what they are offering or to include a compelling guarantee that instantly sets you apart from what everyone else is doing?

Here are some ideas for better understanding your competitors.

1. Purchase an item. I know this might be painful, but it is a great way to better understand how a competitor successfully fulfills an order.

2. Subscribe to your competitor’s newsletters. This is a great way to discover the value they are providing to prospects and customers.

3. Sign up for catalogs and brochures. By getting on your competitor’s mailing list, you’ll get a better idea of the frequency they mail as well as what types of catalogs, fliers, and offers they are mailing.

Take the time to fully develop a compelling UVP. It will help sell prospects, set you apart from your competitors, and increase your customer retention.

Strategy #3: The Marketing Folder

When a prospect shows interest in your business, what do you give them in order to further develop trust and confidence?

Hopefully, you give them a complete marketing communications folder that further helps educate them as to your capabilities. A simple two-pocket folder is all you need to begin!

Here’s what I recommend you include in your folder.

1. The Compelling Story: Every small business owner should be able to tell a compelling story about their passions and why they started their business. A great story about why you started your business can create instant trust. Try and craft your story so that it appeals to the emotions, is fun to read, and provides a sense of passion.

2. Your Business Advantage So what’s the big advantage to doing business with your company? Write out a page that explains the compelling reasons why people should purchase your products and services. Focus on benefits, not features.

3. The Problem Solver: This page should summarize several specific problems and demonstrate how these problems are alleviated with your products and services.

4. The Product/Services Summary Page: Nothing difficult here – simply summarize the various products, services, and package options you offer and list the benefits of each. Use bullet points to quickly summarize benefits.

5. The Testimonial Page: This is the page that summarizes your best customer testimonials. A testimonial is proof that you have a track record of delivering what you promise. Make sure each testimonial focuses on the specific result that was achieved to help the customer with their problem.

Go ahead and add additional items to your folder – just make sure they are relevant to your audience.

Building trust and confidence with your prospects is the best way to eventually convert them to customers. Spend some time with these strategies so that they pay off.

Corte Swearingen has been helping business owners grow their businesses for almost twenty years and is the founder of the SmallBiz Marketing Tips website. For more information on attracting and converting new prospects, read Powerful Marketing Communication Strategies.