How Not to Become a Marketing White Pointer

You may be wondering what marketing has to do with "Jaws". Plenty, if your customer hunting methods make you more of man-eater than a man-helper. Let me explain.

A common mistake businesses (this includes small businesses and SOHOs) make is to market desperately and ruthlessly in their attempt to attract new customers. You see their large advertisements with a large color photo of themselves and a wide toothy smile or an expression worthy of your college professor. Next to this is a description of how great they are, how long they've been in business, where they were educated, how great their service is, and so on.

I don't know about you but I'd have thought this type of self-promotion was more at home in the dating columns because if I'm looking for a handyman to clear up the fall leaves in my garden, I'm looking for someone who advertises that they have a leaf blower that will clean my garden saving me time and money as opposed to how clever they think they are.

Lose the bite: You are selling your service or product, not yourself. Remember to focus on what your customer wants and needs – write about the benefits of your service/product and how it helps them. Your customers don't care if your widget is brand new and polka dotted – they want to know how it will improve their lives, save them time or money, etc.

Another bad habit of white pointer marketers is putting the focus on themselves. Sure, you want to sell stuff because making money is what it is all about… but if you are focused on yourself and not your customers, why should they be interested in doing business with you?

Lose the bite: When you're marketing are you more interested in yourself or your customer? A white pointer is interested only in making money. Sure, they believe in providing excellent customer service – but only because it might make them more money – they don't really care about the customer. They look like they're doing all the right things but their motives are self-serving, bit like the white pointer waiting for the baby seals to fatten up so they have more meat on them when they eat them! You need to focus on your customers because you really do want to help them and it is this honest focus on servicing their needs that will attract them back to you time and time again.

A more serious habit of white pointer marketers is their propensity for stretching the truth or disguising less satisfactory aspects of their product or service in a way that fools the customer into thinking the product is X when it is really Y.

Lose the bite: If your product or service is as good as you believe it is, it will sell itself and it will do so more easily if you present it in an open and honest manner. Think of the new FTC rules… you can't use a testimonial now that presents what could be an outlandish claim without also including a disclaimer that says the results are not typical.

The moral to this article is success lies in focusing on your customer and not on yourself and the more successful you are at doing this, the more you will benefit.