Bob Pritchard identifies 12 core things you need to do to stand out from the crowd

In the 1920s, mass media largely consisted of newspapers, although radio began to become important during the decade. 

A new style of advertising was born where instead of listing a products specifications and qualities they stressed the benefits in terms of lifestyle improvement.

Consumers made decisions emotionally, companies emphasized USP’s, customer service was important in terms of benefits and ease of doing business. 

The corporate manager of the 1920s developed, for the first time, a concept of social responsibility  because they were faced with a greater challenge of legitimizing their positions in society than their entrepreneurial predecessors.

Advance to 2017, while we kid ourselves that we are somehow much more sophisticated and enlightened, absolutely nothing has really changed, today we are just bigger wankers.

Certainly newspapers are dead, radio has changed dramatically and the most effective marketing medium is social and digital media, the structure of the effective marketing message to incentivize people to buy is the same as it has been for 100 years.

I was recently amazed when I gave a presentation to a room full of technology CEO’s and CMO’s and began speaking about the critical keys in any marketing or sales message, and that no one buys the product, they buy the personal benefit of the product, they were dumbfounded.  I was bombarded with questions during the presentation and when I left the stage about the use of emotion, CPB’s, Wow touch points etc in their marketing message.  The view of a majority of attendees was that they promote the product in a well integrated campaign across all social and digital media and hope it will take off. This is the same misguided logic that said 20 years ago that if you bombard consumers with a million ads, your product will sell.

Well, guess what folks, the annals of marketing history is littered with well promoted corporate corpses.

There are 12 elements that should be included in any marketing or sales strategy irrespective of the communication vehicles utilized;

1. Know what business you are in.  The majority of businesses think what they do is the business they are in.  If you don’t know what business you are in you cannot clearly communicate with potential customers.  For example, Hardware stores are in the problem solving business, not the hardware business, a totally different message.
2. Fully understand your customer… geographic, demographic, psychographic, behavioral, and product related.
3. Clearly differentiate from competitors.  This difference can be real or perceived, but it must present a clear choice to the potential customer.
4. Consumer Purchasing Benefit.  Your differential converted into an emotional trigger.
5. Turn all product features into emotional benefits.
6. All marketing/ message focus must be on the customer NOT on the product.
7. Product features do not sell, only benefits sell.
8. Give positively outrageous service at every consumer/ company/product touch point whether online or offline.
9. Your message must be inline- whether online or offline.
10. Be a good society, employee and community citizen… give back.
11. Adding value to every transaction dramatically increases sales results.
12. Reversing the risk can double sales potential.

There are more considerations but these are the basics.   If you are running a business and your results are not what you would like them to be, you should send me an email now.  Too many people who call themselves marketers, not only in startups and early stage businesses, do not understand the critical fundamentals, to their own peril.