The Most Important Question in Marketing

  I want to share with you a little question, the answer to it... is critical to your marketing success.

What is the one question that you have to get right in order to have success in your marketing? It's a very simple & short question.

It's just, "So what"? Or another way of phrasing that is... Who Cares?
And so who's asking this question?

Well, it's anyone that's receiving your marketing. They're going to be asking themselves that question of So What, even if it is just in a subconscious way. If what you have to say resonates, they'll keep reading, and they'll keep engaging, if it doesn't they are off to something else.

A while back, I did an ad critique for an IT company that wanted me to review their brochure. They thought it was It was beautiful, but it was actually a crappy brochure. It did look nice, but it was all about speeds, servers, motherboards, memory, and all sorts of technical stuff.

Stuff that he thought was really important to a business or the company. They thought it would be important for his customers to know just how great their technology was, those brands. Most business owners didn't care about those things, it did not resonate with them.

I then shared with him the "So What" test.

Whatever you put IN YOUR MARKETING has to pass the "So What" test in their eyes. Are they gonna say, well, So What?, How does that help me? How does that help me solve my problems?

By asking this, they realized, that what their customers really wanted, was a reliable network, uptime, fast processing, reliable printing, all that kind of stuff that would help them run their business better. The technology tools were important only to the IT company, They were so focused on the tool, they weren't focused on the customer and what was important to them.

I learned the "So What" test at my first radio sales job out of college. My sales manager was having our role play to improve our sales skills. During the role-play, he would tape a postcard on the forehead of the person playing the client. Guess what was on the card? Yep, "So What"?

This helped us to focus not on what we do or the service that we provided but on how we are going to help them solve a problem. It's stuck with me ever since.

So take a close look at your marketing? Are you really resonating with your customer? Are you talking about what's truly important to them?

Are you talking about your products and services and what you do, or are you talking about what's really going to solve the problem for your customer or help your customer achieve what they want to achieve?

It's a subtle difference, but it's a critical one because if you're not talking with your customer or prospect about what's really important to them, they will tune you out.

They will say, So What, they don't understand me..., they're gonna then move on to someone whose marketing does resonate with them But if it does pass the "So What" test, It shows your prospect that you get it... and you have a solution that's going to help them.

So I hope you find this helpful this week, your homework, now is to go look at your marketing and your website, look at how you send your emails, brochures, flyers, things like that. Are you talking about feeds and speeds or are you talking about what's important to your customer... Would your marketing pass the "So What", who cares test?

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