Email Marketing works best with a …

Email Marketing can be profitable if you stand out from the rest.

Unique Selling Proposition (USP). Yes…I will never stop talking about a USP because it is the key to ALL effective small business marketing. Like the photo on the left, your prospects get thousands of emails daily…some of which come from your competitors. How do you stand out among the rest? 

If you show me a business that doesn’t have a true USP, I will show you an enterprise that is viewed as a commodity by their ideal customer. Email marketing can be a very profitable way to maintain top-of-mind positioning, but only if your messages are communicating a value proposition that means something to your prospects and customers.

According to Jack Trout in Differentiate or Die, research shows that business categories are expanding on one hand, but consumers feel that many of the brands represented are not differentiated from their competitors.  In other words, just because consumers know you’re alive, that doesn’t mean that you represent a ‘value’ in their minds.

Take a look at this partial list:

Examples of Commoditization

Note: Categories with a (*) indicate 0% differentiation in the mind of the consumer.

Obviously, there are thousands of categories not included in this chart. Here’s a question that every small business owner needs to assess. In your category, what do your prospects and customers think about when they’re ready to buy? If you are being sized up against 3 competitors, how do you measure up in the consumer’s minds when they are deciding? Are you communicating a message that means something to them? Or, do you communicate  a “me too” message (where you say basically the same thing as your competition)?

Email marketing is something most leaders in business owners are looking to do. I just went to Google’s keyword tool and discovered that 823,000 people typed in “email marketing” in September 2009. While I’m not attempting to build a case for email marketing in and of itself, I have to say that 823,000 is still a small number in a global market place. According to the Office of Advocacy estimates, there were 29.6 million small businesses in the US back in 2008. That’s about 3% of the marketplace. That suggests to me a huge opportunity for those who approach email marketing correctly.

Small business marketing efforts need to be geared to monetize email marketing. It’s one of the most inexpensive ways to promote your business. Entrepreneurial CEOs understand that email marketing is a great way to automate the follow-up process. The challenge for many is…what to say in those follow-up messages?

In a recent survey, I got a couple questions from people who were basically asking where to find prospects and how to convert them to customers? Here’s the email response I sent to one person:

Steven,

 

Back on October 14th, you went to www.48DaysMarketingSolutions.com and asked the question, “How to convert prospects to customers?”

 

The way you convert prospects to customers is a lot like dating. Let me explain.

 

When you meet a young lady and decide you want to ask her out on a date, you have to present yourself in a way to lead her to believe that the time spent with you on a date will be better than sitting at home or going out with a girlfiend of hers…right?

 

Well, getting a prospect to become a customer is about getting them to trust you so that they take the hard earned cash out of their pocket and invest it with you, because they perceive it to be the best choice at that time. Before they spend that money, they are looking to see if the value being offered is at least equal to or greater than the purchase price.

 

The purchase they’re considering must solve some type of problem.

 

When you convince a prospect that you have the solution to their problem (at a price where the value received is equal or greater than the monetary investment), you’ve got yourself a customer. Does that make sense? Here’s a key factor:  your prospect has to trust that you are able to deliver what you are promising.

 

It really is that simple.

 

You must provide a value that is equal to or greater than the investment you are asking the buyer to make. In their mind, they have to believe that what you are offering is going to solve their problem.

 

The business that does the best job of communicating and selling their value is the one who will make the biggest bank deposit.

 

There are a ton of businesses who give great service or have a great product. However, if they do not market well…no one will know about their value.

 

If no one knows about your value proposition…even if you are the best provider of services…you will be in danger of starving.

 

If you have any additional questions, drop me a line.

 

Make it a great day,

Ramon