The True Bullseye of Marketing
Last month, in talking about overcoming your prospects’ Fear of the Unknown, we left off with this…
“In fact, if you do it right, it can alter the whole dynamic between you and your prospects…and essentially eliminate your competition.”
To better understand how this works, I’d like to share two images with you.
They come from Bill Prenatt, owner of Simply Successful and founder of Experts 4 Entrepreneurs (a group I’m proud to be a part of). Bill is a highly accomplished businessman with a background in sales and one of the true gentlemen you’ll ever meet.
Last year Bill and I were having a discussion at a local coffee shop and he shared this image of the “Sales Universe” with me (click to enlarge)…
Basically you have different levels of prospects feeding into your business universe.
- The Cold ones know that your business exists but not much more than that.
- The Warm ones have heard of you and know a little about your business. Maybe they spent a little time researching your website or found you through some PR you got or a referral.
- The Hot ones are the true prospects that know about your business, know what you do and believe that you have a solution that can help solve a problem they have or fulfill a desire they wish to fulfill.
As Bill and I talked about this image and the sales universe more, it became clear that something was missing. And out of that conversation a new version of the bullseye was born (click to enlarge)…
See, what was missing was the true bullseye of marketing…the absolute dead center of the target.
This is where prospects come to you as fans pre-sold on you and your company. This is where there’s no other option in their minds. This is where you have no competition.
How To Hit the Dead Center of the Bullseye
So how do you get there?
It’s by eliminating the Fear of the Unknown and getting people to TRULY know you and your company.
Now the key here is you don’t do this by just talking about what you do but rather WHY you do it. Let people see what makes you tick.
In the last newsletter, I talked about various ways you can overcome the Fear of the Unknown from creating videos to consistently writing newsletter/blog posts to media appearance to writing a book and more.
Yes, it’s about content marketing. But not just putting out the same old content as everyone else.
It’s putting out content that connects emotionally with your IDEAL prospects.
Since I’ve started blogging regularly, putting out a monthly newsletter, writing for the Crazy Egg blog and just generally putting myself out there more, the effects of this phenomenon have become clearer and clearer to me.
I was floored the first time I experienced the effects of this first hand.
A Sales Call Like No Other
I’d received an email from a prospect who wanted to talk to me about managing AdWords campaigns for them. We scheduled a Skype call and the conversation was much different from others I’d had with prospects.
It wasn’t really a sales call. There was no talk about IF we would work together. Instead this prospect just wanted to know HOW we could work together and WHEN we could get started.
And it all was made possible by one article I wrote about Google AdWords that this prospect discovered online. An article that connected with him on an EMOTIONAL level. After finding that article, he did a little more research on me and Words That Click, read more articles, watched some videos and came away convinced I was the partner he was looking for.
By the time we talked, all I had to do was work out the fees and logistics with him.
That was a totally different dynamic than I was used to.
Living In the Dead Center of the Bullseye
Magical things happen when you’re in that dead center of the bullseye.
- You eliminate the competition.
- Fees are not much of an issue.
- And these clients have much more respect for you and the value you bring to the table.
And, by the way, it’s not just small businesses that can pull this off.
Look at what Apple has done. They have raving fans who line up for hours or more to get their hands on the latest release of the iWhatever. To them, it doesn’t matter what the competition is producing. They just want the Apple product.
Why?
Well, there are plenty of other electronics manufacturers out there. Some of which, arguably, may put out products as good as, if not better, than the ones Apple puts out.
(The fact that that last sentence will probably send some Apple fans into a tizzy gets to the real heart of why Apple’s been so successful.)
Apple’s created a strong emotional bond with their customers/fans. And they haven’t done this by focusing their messaging and content on WHAT they do.
They’ve done this by focusing more on the WHY they do what they do.
Check out an excerpt from a great TEDx talk from Simon Sinek that lays this all out simply and elegantly…
You conquer people’s Fear of the Unknown about you and your business when you put yourself out there. And when you do that right, you give them a glimpse behind the scenes of your world. You let them see the why you do what you do.
Now not everyone out there will respond…and that’s just fine. You don’t want everyone. You’re after your IDEAL propects.
As Simon Sinek puts it:
“The goal is not to do business with everybody who needs what you have, the goal is to do business with the people who believe what you believe.”
So take a stand in the content you put out there…
…let you and your company’s personality come shining through…
…let your prospects get to truly KNOW you and what you stand for.
Cuz when you do this well, that’s when your ideal prospects will become magnetically attracted to you. That’s when you’ll have people coming to you as raving fans who are planted firmly in the dead center of that bullseye.
And that, my friends, is exactly where you want to be!