Communicating Your Service Aura.

This presentation by Rory Sutherland humorously makes the case for selling the intangible benefits of our products and services.

Making the sale often depends on our ability to communicate product or brand benefits that transcend product utility. Marketers tend to think in terms of “solutions” to customer problems — customers are thirsty, so we give them soda pop, they are ambitious so we sell them on college degrees, they want to escape reality so we give them reality TV.

There is another dimension in which needs and wants exist. I call them higher order needs and wants. For those who have memorized Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, these are the social, esteem, and self-actualization levels. Whether or not a consumer believes that a product will actually fill those higher order needs is a matter of perception. It is not “inside” the product like an extra-powerful chemical in toothpaste that will make your teeth so white they glow!, but surrounds the product like an aura.

Making the aura real to prospects is the true challenge of service marketing and branding.

Nowhere is the necessity of communicating a service aura more important than in life and business coaching. It’s true that our prospects and clients have real problems that they need help resolving. It’s also true that we cannot expect to make the initial sale or develop a client relationship unless we help solve that problem. But if we think that is all we are doing, we are seriously mistaken.

There are thousands of coaches and marketing consultants who promise to help solve customer problems. However, the only thing that will compel prospects to choose you over all those other solution-providers is your ability to help them perceive the aura surrounding your service. Help them to experience that aura and they will demand that you — and no one else — become their coaching partner.

How are you going to do that?

B2B Researched Marketing Truths.

Are you marketing your coaching practice to businesses? The Institute for the Study of Business Markets celebrated its 25th anniversary this summer, with a two-day conference probing the current and future state of business marketing practice.

How many of these “indelible truths” apply to your business?

Understand, quantify, demonstrate and document customer value. When both seller and buyer focus on creating value and sharing its benefits, everyone wins.

Look beyond what customers say. Finding customers’ real hot buttons, and understanding how different purchasing influencers work together on buying teams, are keys to successful selling to business.

Your customers can develop valuable new offerings for you if you let them. Customer co-development programs and studying how your most innovative and unusual customers use your product will spur innovation in market-oriented directions.

Take a long- as well as a short-term view of markets. Even in times of economic recession, marketing is a necessary investment.

Implement STP. Following the discipline and logic of “segmenting,” “targeting,” and “positioning” ensures marketing efficiency and focus.

Never doubt the power of brands in business markets. A brand name built and nurtured to connote value opens business customer doors and impresses buying decision makers.

Keep the right customers; lose the wrong customers.

Communications are no longer from “us” to “them.” The communications models of the 20th century don’t describe a digitally networked world.

Cost and price have never had a fundamental relationship. Effective segmentation goes beyond the obvious ways of categorizing customers, such as industry, size, or location.

In B2B, customers are a scarce resource. Many times you know all of them. “Go deeper” with customers you have, to create and capture additional value.

Twitpress Offers A Simple Way to Add Your Blog Posts to Twitter.

If you have a coaching blog AND a Twitter account, consider having your blog posts automatically added to your Twitter feed.

I use Tweetable for my Emerge Communications blog but wanted something even simpler to use for Coaching News. The solution is a Wordpress blog plugin called Twitpress. It’s incredibly easy to install and activate. You just need to download and activate the plugin, go to the “Tools” menu on your Wordpress dashboard, enter your Twitter account information, and you are ready to post away!

What I like about Twitpress is that there is no complicated API authorization process, which can get a little messy and confusing.

You can find Twitpress here.