Small Business Digital CoachGROW REVENUES BY 25 TO 100% OR MORE IN 90 DAYS OR LESS while reducing advertising cost and effort

1. Not tracking the effectiveness of your unique selling proposition (or not defining a USP at all).
2. Not creating a client engagement curriculum
3. Not following up at crucial impression points
4. Not communicating for lifetime value
5. Not communicating through multiple channels and media
6. Not restating your uniqueness at every communication with your clients/prospects.

In the paragraphs below, I’m going to tunnel down with a few points on each mistake and what action steps you can take to minimize their occurence in your strategic marketing system.

1. Not tracking USP effectiveness over time
I’ll first assume that you’ve made an effort to define and articulate a unique selling proposition or differentiating proposition in your business. If not, you need to read my article on “An effective USP”.
If you do have a USP based on the 3 considerations of your business strengths, the market’s desires and a competitive vacuum, then you need to keep an eye on your marketplace over time to verify that the customers haven’t moved on from that attribute, or that your competitors haven’t caught up to make your USP completely ineffective as a differentiator.

Nordstrom’s built much of its business on uniquely excellent customer service, and it worked…but in recent years many of its high-end competitors have stepped up to deliver the same level of customer service as Nordstrom’s, therefore weakening their value proposition.

I remember once watching an episode of a restaurant makeover TV show where the proprietors were struggling to stay open. Of all the problems they had that had to do with food, decor, design, staff service, etc, the most important problem (the core constraint) turned out to be a strategic marketing problem:

12 years later and there was so much competition in that niche, in that neighborhood, that they could hardly believe it as the Makeover chef spread out the map for them to see. All this happened while they weren’t looking. They were to busy running their restaurant to notice that their USP had been taken out from right under them by their competition.

2. Not creating an engagement curriculum
Articulating a USP does not just involve creating a USP slogan or positioning statement. It involves the additional steps of cataloging the series of facts about your business that support the assertion made by your positioning statement, and the articulation and packaging of these supporting facts into such channels as your sales scripts, voice mails, certificates of authenticity, 20 point promise statements, etc.

The features of your products or services, the facts about your business, the ideas behind your processes or approach and the package names given to your products or services, all these things make up the foundation of a communications curriculum and plan which you can deploy through continuously through such things as newsletters, postcards, seminars, tele-seminars, print ads, etc.

3. Not following up at crucial periods
There are certain moments in your prospect conversion process or in your relationship with your clients that deserve special attention if you are to imprint them definitively with a lasting and favorable impression of your business. Some of these moments include:

• After they respond to a lead generation piece or overture
• Immediately after the first sales presentation (as well as subsequent ones)
• Immediately after first purchase (as well as subsequent ones)
• Immediately after mistakes are made by you (especially after mistakes are made)
• Immediately after payment has been made by customers (this may depend on your business)

These are special periods when you can differentiate your business from your competitors and build a Dan Kennedy-style “fence around your herd”. Too many businesses miss out on the opportunity to create an emotional connection in these highly memorable “hot spot” scenarios. Help your clients remember a unique customer experience that you provided them.