What Are You Marketing?

I have recently gotten into watching Gordon Ramsays Kitchen Nightmares, man I love this show. In one of the shows last week he was talking with a restaurant owner about how crowded and cluttered their marketing and menu was. He was telling them that they needed a signature dish and focus for their marketing efforts. One of the questions he asked them is, "What are you marketing?" Which is a great question and it got me to thinking... What am I marketing? After January 1st, I will be marketing more services and e-classes. But I don't want to overwhelm people with too much too quick. Which is what happened on the show, it became overwhelming for people.

That is the question that we all need to be asking ourselves as business owners, marketers and managers! What are we marketing? Is it too much? Is it too much info? Can people process all the information when they get it? Are we sending mixed marketing signals? Can we slim down what we are marketing? Have we ever considered a flagship product?

Ask yourself all of those questions and see what you come up with for answers. One of the questions I ask in all my classes that I teach is this, "Can you describe your business in 5 words or less?" Think about that one for a second... Mine would be, "Marketing Training for Small Businesses". Sure I offer other services, but if I want to be focused in all of my marketing, then I need to be able to describe my business in 5 words or less. How can you focus if you are looking at 100 things at once? Look at the picture below, which side is easier to see and understand?

 Click Here to See the Picture

Pretty easy to see when you have 1 focus instead of 100...

Let's say you have a sale coming up and you want to market the sale. You need to focus because you can't say here is a list of what is for sale, it would over whelm people. So what you would do in order to bring focus to your sale is two ways. First market wide, "upcoming sale everything x% off". You are marketing 100 things, but you are doing it under 1 umbrella. People know you are having a sale, then they can go look to see what you have. You have one message, that is, "upcoming sale x% off". That is a total of 4 words... What you can also do is utilize your Facebook page and do one item per day to market, that falls under your umbrella. You are still focusing, but you are expanding this a little more. Each day up until the sale or even during the sale, promote that one item as being on sale. "X product is on sale!" or "X product is x% off!" You are still sticking in that 5 words, which is easy for people to process.

As long as you are focused in your marketing and you aren't confusing your customer base, then you should do well! I asked the question above about, "can people process the information", because people can only process a certain amount of information at once. Now I can get onto my discussion about how the mind works and conscious vs subconscious. But that would go way off track and we need to stay focused... lol Let me say this, I have studied how the mind works for many years, read a ton of books and as amazing as the brain is at processing all the info we give it, we still only consciously process small bits. The red car syndrome, a story for another day.

If you really want to focus your marketing and your business for a few months. Consider a flagship product and market the crap out of it! Don't choose your worst seller or something that is ridiculously over priced. Go with one of your top sellers and focus all your marketing efforts for 3 months on it. Let that be your flagship product during that time and watch your sales grow for that item, but if you are a good sales person watch your upsales grow as well. If you don't know what your flagship product can be, email me, I would love to help you out and help you come up with a plan to market it.

Flagship products are awesome! You have a focus for your marketing, plus you may put a product out there that no one even knows you have! That is why I say one of your top sellers and not your top seller. Your top seller is already there and we want to show people what else you have to offer. If you have a product that compliments your current flagship product, offer it at the time of sale. If you have 3% of the people purchase it, then you have just made 3% more than you would have without offering it. This is one of the things I will be doing with my shopping cart next year. Offering a complementary product with my flagship. I will also be swapping my flagship around every 3 months.

Ok, one cautionary statement on flagship products. Swap them out once a year, unless it is the only item you are selling. People will become numb to seeing the same message over and over again. So remember to change your marketing up if you go the route of keeping the flagship for a year. You will know your marketing on your flagship has gone stale when you can see the amount of traffic to it drop drastically. If you watch your numbers and track your website, then you will notice this fairly quick.

In closing, think about what you are marketing along with the other questions above. Try and focus your marketing message so that people can process the information. Consider a flagship product and focus your marketing on that product to watch your sales grow. Finally make sure your marketing message doesn't go stale!

Original Article can be found here: www.freskosmedia.com/what-are-you-marketing/