You should have this as your goal for your product or service. What information will help set the buying criteria in your favor? Data makes your information work harder, no matter what you sell. If you want to serve your buyer, then being a market expert not just a product expert means being more knowledgeable than your competitors.
If you really want to serve your buyer, then you must be a market expert and not just a product expert. This is simple since most of your competitors will be more concerned about selling product than about positioning themselves as experts. In cases where I have personally run companies using these strategies or helped clients do the same, we have literally slaughtered our competitors.
Here are two more examples of Education based marketing. I worked with a company that sold research aids to tax experts such as accountants and lawyers. They were focused on product data: They would say,” Here’s our research aid and here’s what it does.” I changed their focus to market data: “The IRS now requires you to take these 22 steps in your research. These are steps you can’t possibly bill to the client, as no client will pay for all this. So what you can do instead is use our products. These products speed up this process.” Market data made the product data much more important.
Why? Bookstores were putting the calendars right by the cash registers. When do you buy calendars? At the end of the year. So there you are standing in line waiting to check out all your Christmas gifts and you see a calendar on Mustangs. Your boss loves classic Mustangs. You buy him a calendar. The mass merchants were putting the calendars in the back by the stationary department. They weren’t moving nearly as many calendars per rack or spinner. By showing this data to more and more stores, this client increased sales 20% in a single year whereas they had not had an increase in sales for four years prior to using this market data to motivate better positioning of the calendars. And it goes on and on. No matter who you are or what you sell, you need to take the time to collect market data and build your “core story” or your “stadium pitch.” Today the Internet makes market data readily available. Sites like www.census.gov, www.CNN.com and other sources have great information on just about any subject you can imagine. You will have no trouble gathering massive amounts of data for your core story. The problem is finding the time to put it all together. Luckily, there is a company called Empire Research Group (www.empireresearchgroup.com) that can actually do all this work for you.
Your boss loves Mustangs so you buy him the calendar. Mass merchant stores were putting the calendars in the back by the stationary department. They weren’ t selling nearly as many calendars. By showing this date to more and more stores, this client increased sales 20% in a single year whereas they had not had an increase in sales for four years prior to using this market data to motivate better positioning of the calendars.
No comments:
Post a Comment