Hey everyone, Sam Nelson, owner of Website Muscle, here again to help you Clarify Your Marketing Message.
We’re headed into Step 4 of this exercise. As you’ll remember, Step 1 was identifying who your customers are, Step 2 is addressing the problem they are coming to you for, and Step 3 is establishing trust and why customers should work with you.
Note: Scroll to the bottom for links to the rest of the Clarify Your Marketing Message Series.
Before we start on Step 4, let’s take a quick break. We’ve been talking about the customer, their problem, and your company, but now we really want to think like marketers.
Ask yourself this question: if we could narrow our process down to three or four compelling and concise steps, what would those be?
Step 4: Share Your Process
Pre-Purchase Process
The first way to share your process in a marketing context is: what steps do leads take in order to become customers?
For some businesses, there is a huge opportunity to identify these steps for potential customers, because they might be confused and not know what the steps are. I always try to limit this to three steps, because three is both easy to remember and easy to complete.
Post-Purchase Process
The second way to share your process, which is often more important for our B2B clients, is: what are the steps after a lead becomes a customer? Within your marketing message, this also helps to alleviate potential fears or frustrations.
You’re telling leads, “I know you don’t know what working with us will be like, but it’s very simple. Once you become a customer, we’ll do X, Y, and Z, and that’s what a relationship with us is like.”
Of course, there are a ton of other things that you do for customers once they’re on board. But in your marketing message, you’re trying to cut through all of the other noise that businesses are inundated with day in and day out, and the way to do that is through simplicity.
You need to be able to say, “Once you become a customer with us and go through our process, you’ll be successful.”
Reflect Your Customers’ Frustrations
If you go with either the pre-purchase or the post-purchase plan, we want to make sure that you’re either talking about the business goals and objectives from Step 1 or the frustrations in Step 2.
If you know that your customer has a frustration, and part of your plan is to alleviate that frustration, that’s a successful marketing message.
Again, we want to identify three main steps, either as a customer first starts to work with you or once you’ve established a relationship and are working together long term.
Commitments & Agreements
Another big part of this plan is: what commitments or agreements do you make with your customers?
There is a lot of value in identifying what these are. You could be making a promise, or a guarantee — a lot of our B2B clients don’t offer guarantees, but they can offer value through commitments or promises to their customers.
Even if you don’t have an agreement or commitment yet, it doesn’t have to be difficult to make one. If you identify three industry-wide frustrations and build promises around easing those, customers are going to want to hear that, right?
Customers know about industry-wide frustrations because they have probably experienced them themselves. Now, when you come along and your company can stand on a commitment to solving those problems, you’re providing a unique value.
Our Example: Code of Conduct
As an example from our company, we have a Code of Conduct. We have six commitments that we make to clients, which you can see at the bottom of our homepage.
We address six frustrations that web design clients come to us with all the time, and we commit to alleviating those problems and standing by our word.
Stay tuned for Step 5: Determine Your CTAs.