 As a result of this column you and your organization will understand :
- Learn that all financial products and services contain features that clients and prospects consider to be positive, negative and neutral.
- Differentiate your features and tell the buying public so they judge your offering to be superior to another.
- Make your client or prospect feel more satisfied, safer, more confident, or even more amused.
When it comes to marketing, nothing, absolutely nothing is written in concrete. Flexibility is the name of the game and strategies must be changed at a moment’s notice.
- Sooner or later, markets will change and competitors will catch up.
- Whether you’re a new entrant in the financial services arena, or a seasoned leader who everyone else is chasing, you’ll need to continue to change the game to deliver superior performance.
As Will Rogers once said, “Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” All products and services contain features that clients and prospects consider to be…
- Positive
- Negative
- Neutral.
What are the features of your product or service, and how do prospects and clients perceive them? Just as importantly, how do you market those features?
- If your features are judged as a basic, the public will take it for granted because all competitors have it.
- Only by differentiating features, and telling the buying public about those differences, will you cause clients and prospects to judge your offering to be superior to another.
Hewlett-Packard created a differentiating feature by eliminating the need to use a computer. By designing ink jet printers that use photo memory cards directly as inputs, HP gave customers a compelling reason to buy their product…and, you might recall, HP conducted a massive, multifaceted marketing campaign to tout those differences.
If your offerings can build in strong emotional features, which appeal to the values of the customers in your marketplace, you can win their decision to buy your product or use a service.
Baby Einstein was sold to Disney for $25 million because its founder understood that introducing art and music to babies would create great emotional appeal to parents. She further understood that only very simple videos would hold the attention of infants.
As Baby Einstein demonstrates, it’s only by discovering how specific segments of the market react to specific features that you can develop products and services that your customers will value.
What is irritating to customers in your marketplace right now? For a period of time, the unreliable performance of Windows PCs presented rich opportunity for Apple to entice customers to change to its operating system. It developed something different, and it marketed that difference.
Is there a product or service in the marketplace today that is great but too expensive for many people? Initially, earlier versions of battery-powered toothbrushes were quite expensive, but when Procter & Gamble introduced the SpinBrush, which sold at a price competitive with high-end manual brushes, sales rocketed.
Of course, most products and services have existing negative and neutral factors. How might you reduce or entirely remove them? Ask, which attributes do customers grumble about most? Some consumers might be saying that they love their PDA but detest the complexity of setting it up to benefit from its features.
Once negative or neutral features are identified, ask if you can make the customer feel …
- More satisfied
- Safer
- More confident
- Or even more amused
People want to enjoy products and services. They don’t want more work by having to figure them out.
Also, question if there is something that could be eliminated. Are you offering more than the customer really wants, and thus having to charge more than the customer would really like to pay?
Once you have asked the critical questions, your marketing needs to, as they say on Broadway, “accentuate the positive, and eliminate the negative.”
The fastest-growing hotel chain, Extended Stay America, has put the emphasis on simplicity. Lower prices due to lack of amenities and services are key to its success. There is no bar or lounge, and housekeeping is done weekly.
Regardless if you are a new entrant in your marketing arena or the seasoned leader, everyone is chasing somebody for market share. To begin the task, you need to ask the customer, “What would it take to have you buy more of, or pay more for this product or service?” |
