If you want to get good at marketing, you need to shut up and listen. Not necessarily to me, although I do know some stuff but, who you really need to listen to, is your clients.
Stop broadcasting, start listening. Because, they're the key to absolutely everything you need to know. (If you haven't got any clients, you can get going with some broad assumptions about what people might want to hear from you, and then hone your message as you go along).
What do I mean by 'stop broadcasting'? Stop telling everyone, endlessly, what you do, and what's so great about it.
Instead, start listening. Listen to what your clients, or the people who you want to have as clients, are saying outside of what they're saying directly to you, or about you, or in relation to anything to do with your product or service.
What are they interested in?
What do they care about?
What's really important to them?
How are they feeling?
Understanding what's going on in the minds of your clients will help to guide your marketing, and keep it on course.
This is much deeper than 'what car do they drive?', 'what do they watch on tv', 'what magazines do they read'.
Understanding how people feel, and showing that you 'get' them, builds connections with people that are genuinely meaningful. It also helps you to move away from describing what you do in terms of features:
- it's multi-coloured!
- it's a cube!
- it's a puzzle!
and instead moves you towards talking about benefits
- satisfy your need for competition
- escape from life, for a while
- absorb yourself in reminiscing about your childhood.
(I don't believe I ever managed to solve a Rubik's cube, even once, unless you count the 'removing the stickers and swapping them round' approach.)
Anyway, enough about puzzles (although, let's be honest, marketing often feels like one).
When you can accurately identify the benefits your product or service offers, you will open up your marketing world to many, many more topics than trying to rephrase 'we do this, isn't it great?' for the 6 billionth time.
Get to know what people truly care about, and you are well-placed to let them know that you understand them, as people.
And that is good marketing.
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