Crafting marketing messages.

Marketing isn’t about today - it’s all about tomorrow. It's about getting to know your audience and planing your future. Start by putting out messages to industry analysts about where you want to go. Get their feedback and advice (and pick up great inside information as well). You want them to believe they’re creating an industry so they can then become the experts in that space. But you’ve got to pay them in the interim by buying their research because that’s how they make a living.

“Pull" marketing is based on giving the prospect something of value before you ask them to buy. It’s a way of establishing the basis for a relationship that takes place before you offer them the opportunity to become a customer. "Push" marketing is asking for an order without having established a relationship and is a totally non-selective process. Anyone who wants to buy can become your customer. If your business proposition is based on having a customer for a long time, “pull” is the only way to insure that both parties are interested in a long-term relationship. A “stay-in-touch” program is a low-cost way of building top-of-the-mind awareness with existing customers and with prospects who haven’t yet found compelling value in the sales message.

Many entrepreneurs are so technology and product driven that they never recognize that marketing is important. They don’t recognize that prospects and customers don’t care directly about the functionality of products. Prospects and customers care about benefits and, more specifically, the value of those benefits in their own lives. "What's In It For Me?" is the central question that any prospect or customer is dealing with (whether consciously or unconsciously) while receiving your company's marketing message. The entrepreneur must address this question while, at the same time, providing a marketing message that:

(1) helps inappropriate prospects take themselves out of consideration (because dealing with inappropriate prospects costs money and wastes valuable time).

(2) prepares true prospects to be receptive to the sales message they’ll eventually get from you.

(3) leads them directly into the selling cycle.

Product packaging is a great way to activate the consumer’s impulse to buy. It's the loudest possible advertising vehicle you have - it’s right in the store when customers are standing there with their money. Yet, go down the cereal or pasta isles in any supermarket and you’ll see that very few companies really try to market with their packaging. Frito Lay is an exception - it’s always updating its packaging.