If you’ve ever been to a mall, a theme park or some other spread-out, public-facing venue, you’ve run across those directional signs that proclaim “You Are Here!” so you can get your bearings and figure out your next move.
In chapter one of Reality Marketing Revolution, the authors let their entrepreneurial readers know where most of them are “right now”. In subsequent chapters, they show them how to get to where they want to be as successful enterprises.
Where most entrepreneurs are right now (the ones who are still trying to figure things out) is predictable enough: they’re doing what they think they should be doing to get the word out about what they do. Trouble is, there is so much static–so much other “market noise”– that their target audiences can’t hear them.
Market noise includes competitors who are yelling louder, saying the right things to the wrong people and the wrong things to the right people, clients who are too swamped to regard your message as more important than what they’re doing right now and tomorrow, and the fact that you’re probably sending the messages via the wrong media.
So how do you get your message to pole vault over the market noise so it comes down in precisely the right place at the right time to capture your prospects’ rapt attention? That’s what the balance of the book is all about
The authors pose the question, “What is your basic marketing strategy?”
1. What are your revenue goals over the next 12 to 18 months?
2. Who, precisely, will buy what you offer? (Who’s your target audience?)
3. What pain, problems or predicaments do they have that cause them to want to buy what you offer?
4. What solutions do you have for their pain, problems or predicaments?
5. How are your solutions remarkable enough to create a buzz and put you head and shoulders above your competition? (This is your USP, or Unique Selling Proposition.)
Unless you have the answers to each of these five questions, you’re working at a distinct disadvantage. The authors write, “Strategy before tactics is a must when it comes to crafting an effective marketing effort.”
Any tactics you employ (advertising, etc.) must be part of a larger plan with goals, objectives, and metrics to effectively measure their success. Otherwise you can end up throwing good money after bad. And money is something most entrepreneurs don’t have a lot of, starting out, so you want to be sure you’re doling it out in ways that have the greatest likelihood of coming back to you, and then some (by a bunch).
Get the book.
