Yowsie! - Yowsie Marketing Course

marketing

Before you begin a marketing campaign you need to have confident answers to two questions:

Who am I?
Why choose me?

Step 1 - Work out who you are.

It may sound very strange to suggest that you have got this far without knowing who you are. You know perfectly well that you are an Accountant or a Builder or an IT Consultant.

For instance: I am a Web Site Designer. Great. Bully for me. So what? I don't expect much of a response when I tell someone "I design web sites".

I need to apply The Outwith Principle to that. I need to re-define what I do, not in terms of what I sell to people but in terms of what needs I can meet.

Let's see if, thinking that way, I can come up with a Key Identity Statement, a short and complete description of what I am about, a phrase I can memorise and use at meetings, on the phone, in promotional material.

"I help people promote their business and make sales, by effective use of the Internet."

I may want to hone that in time but it will do for now. The potential customer is now the focus. Even in the statement itself, the customer's needs come before what I am offering as the solution. I am now much more likely to get the response, "Could you do that for me?".

This new statement of what I do actually forces me to re-consider who I am. It is not enough for me to be just a Web Site Designer: I have to be a Marketing Consultant and an IT Trainer too. It's not that I want to be a Jack of All Trades, just that I have to deliver a comprehensive service. Offering to make a website commits me to advising on effective content. I can't put up some pictures and text then just leave my client not knowing how to get people to see it and how to build relationships on-line and use e-commerce for sales.

Applying The Outwith Principle to define who I am may well open my eyes to how I need to grow in understanding and skills.

This approach will put me strides ahead of many other Web Designers but in such a competitive market can I convince people that it's really me that they need?

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