You Must Educate Your Prospects

OK, so we've been discussing the three purposes of marketing. They are:

Objective #1: Capture the attention of your target market (prospects).

Objective #2: Facilitate the prospect's decision-making process.

Objective #3: Give your customers a specific, low-risk, easy-to-take action that further facilitates their ability to make a good decision.

Let's discuss objective three in more detail: Lower the risk of taking the next step in the buying process so you can further educate them.

You can't cram everything that a person needs to know into one advertisement. You have to find a way to give them more information and you do this via marketing tools; reports, websites, audio CDs, and CD ROMs.

Have you ever bought a new home from a builder? They have lots of ways to advertise and promote, one being the Sunday paper in the New Homes section. But if you look in that section of the newspaper, you'll see that none of the ads there accomplishes the three objectives of marketing: 1) to capture the attention of the target market, 2) facilitate their decision-making process by educating them about what they need to know, and 3) give them a low-risk way to become more educated and take the next step to further the buying process. Those ads don't do this. Instead, they feature beautiful, happy, smiling people, pictures of houses and floor plans, price ranges of homes, and maps to various neighborhoods.

The ads all look virtually identical and contain similar pictures and words. From the prospect's standpoint, they are the same. There's nothing to get their attention, no acknowledgment of what the customers needs or problems might be. And, there's nothing in any of the ads to educate the prospect. There's nothing to facilitate their decision-making processes. There's nothing to show them what they need to know or tell them what issues to consider. How many things do you need to know when buying a new home? Are you an expert on lumber, plumbing, masonry, electrical, insulation, flooring, framing, roofing, finish out, and the 613 other relevant, pertinent issues involved with building a home? Of course not. And you won't be after reading those ads, either.

I'm not saying every buyer wants to know all that stuff; I am saying that all buyers would like to at least be aware of the relevant issues that are at stake. With these ads, all you know is that smiling people supposedly live there, and they all have floor plans and maps to neighborhoods. All of these ads are ineffective because prospective buyers want and need to be educated so they can feel confident when making their decision. Nobody is providing this information. The first one who does, wins.

Then there's no low-risk way for the prospect to take the next step in the buying process. The only option these ads give is to come into the model home. You say, "That's low risk." The heck it is! If you're just thinking about buying a new home, and the only option is to come to a model home that's 45 minutes from your house, and you know that it will stocked with starving salespeople who will do everything in their power to force you to buy that home on the spot, is that low risk?

All of the ads fail miserably on this level; as a result, they get lost in the shuffle of all the other ads.
There's a better way to handle this situation.
Why do you think that marketing people always feel forced into a price-competitive situation? If you feel like that's the case in your business, it's your own fault. Your lack of marketing ability has led to a situation where there are no distinctions between you and your competitors. You haven't introduced the proper parameters or educated your prospects on the relevant issues. You've made no offers to lower the risk of taking the next step.

Effective marketing accomplishes all three objectives. It causes your prospects and customers to conclude: "I would have to be an absolute fool to do business with anyone else but you regardless of price."

If you feel that you're always competing on price, it's because price is the only relevant variable you've given your prospects to consider, and from the prospect's perspective, all things are equal, so they would be fools not to demand a lower price.

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