Our Guru Speaks
WHAT’S REALLY ON OUR CUSTOMERS MINDS?
I had an opportunity today to sit in on a seminar here on the ASU campus hosted by Tim Ingram and Howell Westbrook from our local television station, KAIT. The KAIT marketing department brought Don Fitzgibbons, the self-proclaimed “Guru of Ads” senior consultant at Jim Doyle & Associates to speak on “The Fourteen Rules of The Guru”for successful advertising to a group of small businesses here in Jonesboro.
Don “The Guru” made a very entertaining presentation with good comments about what works and what doesn’t work in broadcast advertising. During his presentation he outlined his 14 Rules with a number of great examples. I will not rehash all of his rules. You can find them at his website http://www.guruofads.com and click on the “secrets” tab. It is worth the time to surf his site there is lot of valuable information for small businesses to consider about their advertising messages. A couple points I want to pass on to our small business friends who couldn’t attend were:
- “In the old days the MEDIUM was the message” TODAY “the MESSAGE IS the message“. In other words, we get so wrapped up in what channel to use that we forget that the most important part is the messageyou are trying to convey to your target audience. The question is how much time do you spend thinking about the message you are trying to get across and HOW important is that message to your viewers? Another example of getting so involved with our TOOLS we ignore the BIG PICTURE
- The other point, one of his 14 rules is to Identify the Point of Entry of your Customer. WHAT IS ON THE BRAIN of your customer when he (or she) walks in the front door of your store? Lands on your website, blog or social media network? Exactly WHAT is it that your customer REALLY cares about? What gets that customer in the door?
He used an excellent example of the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, Spain. Every year bulls are turned loose to run through the streets of Pamplona en route to the arena. Spectators have taken to running with the bulls, many having too close a brush with their horns for my taste. BUT… the real question is WHAT MAKES THOSE BULLS RUN through the streets and INTO the arena? The bulls don’t realize that once they are in the arena by the end of the day they will all be so much ground chuck…no the reason that the bulls run is… the organizers run COWS ahead of them.
The bulls aren’t running up the streets and into the arena for National Pride, or because its the running of the bulls day, or even because they want to gore somebody. The reason they run “hell for leather” up those streets, turn into the arena is because they want to spend some quality time with “the ladies”.
So the take home for us in identifying the Point of Entry is that WE must IDENTIFY the reason our customer makes contact with us.
- What is on the customer’s mind…not yours.
- What Need or Want does your customer have that he or she thinks visiting your business will satisfy?
Believe it or not… your customer isn’t interested in the FEATURES of your product or service they are interested in how they perceive your product or service is going to SATISFY some need or want that they have.
The take home…
- Identify your customers needs and wants,
- craft a message that show the customer how YOU can satisfy those needs and you probably have a sale.
- Concentrate on features and benefits you probably lost the customer.
Don made a number of other excellent points that every small business owner should consider when crafting their marketing messages whether using newspaper ads, broadcast ads, bill board, websites, blogs or even social media. Good seminar, thanks to KAIT Region 8 for hosting it and bringing us “The Guru of Ads” it was time well spent. Visit his website and you will pick up a number of other good ideas for your marketing tool kit.
Let me know what you think. Good article? could be better? leave me a comment or a question. Thanks for reading.
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