With the holidays and the end of the year fast approaching, small business owners are working hard to capture as many sales as possible to bring their year to a close. Developing very targeted website marketing messages can help you more directly capture your customers’ attention to gain those needed sales.
But how do you do that?
One way to do that is through solutions-based marketing, targeting your customers by helping them see how you can help them with a problem.
What problems are you solving in your marketing?
Let’s first recap Friday’s blog where we talked a little bit about developing solutions for your customers’ needs. We talked about three steps to develop your solution:
- Find your target customer or the audience that you want to reach. Are you trying to reach moms, dads, teens, grandparents, people with low income or maybe other small business owners?
- Really dig into your customers’ problems. What are their true issues? what keeps them up at night and what could you do that would make their lives so much: easier, better, same time, energy or would prevent an even bigger problem.
- Develop a solution to the problem – You can brainstorm, get insights from your customers or develop a panel of customers to tell you what you could do tot solve their problems and make you another satisfied customer
Marketing message development
Having the problem and the solution are 2 of the 3 parts to this recipe. Now we have to figure out how to talk about it. Talking about helping your customers may be second nature to many of you but for others, it may be a struggle to talk about your business from the customer’s point of view (POV).
When developing your messaging you need to keep in mind the five steps of message development. I have also included 3 examples for each:
- Talk to the customer, about the customer – You are not talking about your business, you are talking about them, their needs and their wants:
3. Tell them how you can help them:
“At GiftsRUs, we carry a large stock of gifts great for many types of people.”
“Call Everyday Plumber who is on the job 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days per year.”
“QuickyMaids can come to do a quick clean on your house, making sure the important areas are clean so you can worry about other things (like what are you cooking for dinner?)”
4. Confirm what sets you apart from your competition:
“We also have trained sales associates to help you select the perfect gift based on the answers to five questions – guaranteed.”
“Unlike our competition, we know that your sinks need to be fixed immediately, not the following business day. “
“We have a 1-hour arrival guarantee on all calls Monday through Friday and have service packages for 1-hour, 3-hour and 5-hour cleanings so you can buy based on available time.”
5. Lastly, remind them how it can make them feel to have their problem solved:
“With your gift from GiftsRUs, you’ll make everyone in the office wish you were their secret Santa.”
“You’ll be able to rest and relax after your big family dinner knowing that Everyday Plumber has got your dishwasher running so you don’t have to.”
Putting all of these steps together gives you a full message that targets your customers’ problem, your solution, tells them why you are the best and reassures them that they will feel great after spending their money with you. And that makes both of you feel great!
Website and social media marketing
Now that you have your messaging, you can add it to your website and social media. Remember, the first step in the process was identifying your target customer.
If you have different customer types on your online channels, and you want to market to them all, you may want to try several different messages and alternate posting them to capture several different groups with your campaign.
When possible, you should only target each group, each person as it would increase your likelihood of truly targeting your one audience. You may need to create several different variations of your same messaging to fit your different social channels. Play around with them a bit and see what your customers respond to most. Then….
Repeat, Repeat, Repeat
Your customers have a million and one things coming at them during the holiday season. You could post 30 messages and they only see one.
Don’t post the same exact thing over and over again but look at doing targeted paid posts instead. Alternatively, create several approaches to the same messaging to make sure that at least one is getting in front of your customer. Hopefully, your message or post will help them with a problem that they are facing.
Thanks for reading and if you like this blog, share it with your friends by clicking on your favorite social media link.
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