MARKETING STRATEGIES: What is your message?

We have two situations we need to consider in getting our message right. For customers who know what they want, they need to find us. For customers who are unsure of what they want, we need to help them clarify their needs.

For the customer seeking a solution to a need or problem we can satisfy, we need to ensure that they can find us easily. We then want to ensure that we provide the information and evaluation environment to ensure that our product or service can be readily and easily evaluated and that our quality of fit is easily established.

We may also need to help educate our customer to recognise the problem or need they have and to see us as a potential, if not the best, solution.
WHAT PROBLEM DO YOU SOLVE?

We need to start with the basics – what problem or need do you solve? What problem can you fix? What needs do you have a solution for?

This may seem somewhat simplistic but, of around half the entrepreneurs I ask this question, they simply confuse me with their answers. I then end up spending an hour asking them questions about their business, customers and products or services until I have worked it out.

I always use the phase “tell it to your mother” – now does she understand what you do? My partner, Katalin always says – “tell it to the blond”. She is blond and very smart.

However, many of the entrepreneurs we meet are involved in information or computer technology and the problems they solve are often very complex. Still if you can’t explain it to very smart and well-educated people who know a lot about business, how are you going to explain it to your marketplace?

You would be surprised how difficult it can be to extract this information from the entrepreneur. They talk about features and functions, customers, competitors and technology standards and often bore you silly with TLCs (three letter acronyms). I simply keep saying – “tell me what problem you solve”.
Once I have worked out what need or problem they solve, I ask them to put the answer into one to two sentences. We keep playing with the words until they provide a concise and accurate definition of the problem solved.

Imagine you looked at a website and it said, “We satisfy our customer needs”. So you don’t even know what industry they are in. What about “We provide an extensive range of services to the insurance industry”. Great – but what type of services?

What about “We provide a range of data collection devices for use with the iPhone”. Nice – but what would I use them for?

All too often firms advertise the products they sell or the services they offer but neglect to state what the products are used for or what the services deliver as an outcome.

Tom McKaskill is a successful global serial entrepreneur, educator and author who is a world acknowledged authority on exit strategies and the former Richard Pratt Professor of Entrepreneurship, Australian Graduate School of Entrepreneurship, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia. A series of free eBooks for entrepreneurs and angel and VC investors can be found at his site here.