Several years ago I was looking for a new email marketing system. I’d tried several different programs. They were all driving me crazy. For instance, one program charged by the list, not the person. If subscriber Mary signed up for 3 of my lead magnets, she was counted as 3 subscribers and I’d be charged accordingly.
When I was looking for a new service, I went right to the features section. I was well aware of the benefits of an email marketing system. I just needed one that was right for me. Eventually, I settled on ConvertKit, which I use to this day.
So my list included things like how subscribers were counted. I needed a responsive help desk. I’m not into DIY – I believe I was put on earth to keep the help desk from being bored. And I needed a super-simple interface with good UI.
What surprised me was that most of the services I dealt with didn’t seem to understand why people signed up. I wondered if they’d bothered to find their clients’ backstories.
A lot of them promoted their software as “easy” or even “a good way to get started.”
That’s a good concept if most of your clients bring a backstory of, “I am just getting started with email marketing,” or, “I’ve been doing my lists by bcc on email.”
But those messages will be a turnoff for someone like me. My backstory was, “I’ve been all over the map. I have a list. I know the basics.”
It wasn’t my first rodeo…and your clients may feel the same way.
It’s easy to target beginners and newbies for 3 reasons:
- It’s so tempting – and so satisfying – to explain how your services work.
- You follow the excellent advice to focus on benefits, not features. You need to (a) offer benefits that are unique to your particular service and (b) emphasize features that they’ll easily translate into benefits.
- They won’t respond to your marketing pitch with, “I’ve heard all this before.”
Some marketers believe you’ll be more profitable more quickly when you target beginners, because there are so many more of them and they’re hungry for help. In some markets, that’s true.
However, sometimes your best clients come with backstories of experience. Their testimonials say, “I was ready to give up on coaching till I signed up with Genevieve.”
That’s when you can focus more on features. You tell stories about how you differ from the competition, not how you solve the clients’ main problem. The hero is someone just like them, someone who struggled to fix the problem till she found you.
RESOURCES:
Episode #105 of the Strategic Storytelling podcast explains the different levels of awareness among prospective clients. Those who are solution-aware, just comparing suppliers, will call for a marketing approach that’s different from those who are barely aware they have a problem.
