Larry has given a great example of what we should all use when considering the marketing of our business.
When studying marketing, one of the first concepts that we learn about is called the Marketing Mix.
There are 4 elements to this marketing mix:
- Product: this element describes the specifications of the actual goods or services and how these specifications relate to the end-user's needs and wants
- Pricing: This refers to the process of setting a price for a product, including discounts
- Placement (or distribution): refers to how the product gets to the customer. It has also sometimes been called Place, referring to the channel by which a product or service is sold.
- Promotion: This includes advertising, sales promotion, including promotional education, publicity, and personal selling.
I have always seen the concept of the marketing mix as an interesting theory for marketing products.
But as a service provider, I have never seen it as relevant to my own marketing activities.
Recently I came across the concept of the 4 Us. No that's not us as in you and me...it's the letter 'u' that fits between 't' and 'v' in the alphabet.
The 4 Us are
- urgency
- uniqueness
- ultra-specific
- usefulness
This approach makes a whole lot more sense to me than the traditional concept of the marketing mix.
Urgency
For the most part, people who buy your service or mine do not hire us because they want to.
They hire us (that is the word 'us' as in 'you and me') because they need our help with resolving a specific problem or achieving a specific goal or outcome.
While they may need our service, what they want is our reassurance that we can help them...and they want this reassurance yesterday.
From a marketing perspective, do whatever you can do to address prospects' sense of urgency about getting their needs met. It will help convert prospects to clients.
Uniqueness
Uniqueness is all about your personal brand and what distinguishes you from the competition.
Prospects will not be satisfied with just any agent...they want the one that stands out from the crowd and will help them most.
Ultra-specific
If uniqueness is about your personal brand, being ultra-specific is all about your brand promise.
It's telling prospects specifically what you will do for them.
Usefulness
In effect, this final element converts your brand promise into the question that all prospects need answered: what's in it for me.
Purely and simply...it details the benefits that clients will enjoy as a result of hiring you.
It seems to me that I have finally found a better version of the marketing mix.
It makes a lot of sense to those of us...i.e. you and I..who provide services.
Usually when letters are turned into plurals, an apostrophe is used so that one doesn't have to explain that Us is not the word us but several U's. Otherwise one can have a lot of fun explaining As, Is, and Us.