If you’ve been doing social networking, twittering, facebooking, SEO-ing, pay-per-clicking… and everything else the marketing experts say you should be doing…

…but business isn’t booming, you’re about to discover the reason why.

Picture two business people.

The first has a flashy website, nice business cards, goes to the right networking events, attends every sales training course you could imagine and is wired up to the eyeballs with social networks and online marketing.

The other guy uses only a fraction of these tactics, with just one seemingly small advantage. An advantage that most of us think of as too obvious or insignificant.

If you had $100 riding on who’d be most successful, who would you pick?

If you said the first business person, read this article and take notes. You may be shocked.

If you said the second guy, congratulations. You’re on the right track, and what I’m about to show you will kick sales up a gear or two.

….

So what is this small advantage that allows the little guy to trump his big flashy competitors?

It took me a while to figure out. I’m an online marketing consultant, so everyday I’m at the coalface – building pay per click campaigns, landing pages, split testing… etc.

A great benefit of this work is I get to see more marketing tactics in a year than the average entrepreneur would see in a lifetime.

The downside is you see the stark, painful reality of business as well.

For no obvious reason, some businesses would be a tearaway success, while others would go down faster than the Titanic.

These people were my clients, so it bothered me. I was doing everything right, technically… so what was making the difference?

When you boil the answer down, it’s embarrassingly simple.

Yet most entrepreneurs (yes, that includes you) are not doing this.

So read on, take notes, and apply what I’m about to show you – it works. The last business I tried this on is up 35%.

….

Ready? Ok.

I call it this system the Fundamental Trilogy because it’s (quite unsurprisingly) made up of 3 parts.

Here they are:

1. Do you know exactly what you’re selling?
2. Do you know precisely who you’re selling it to?
3. Do you give the people you’re selling to a damn good reason to buy what you’ve got?

Answer those 3 questions honestly.

Now picture your competitors: are they thinking like this? If they’re not, you already have home field advantage.

Why? Because when you apply it, the Fundamental Trilogy gives you massive insights into your business and your market.

You’ll discover aspects of your product or service you’re underselling and how to reposition them to beat your competitors.

You’ll know your customer so well, you’ll not only be able to accurately target them in your marketing, but also communicate with them so effectively, they’ll never want to go anywhere else.

And best of all, you’ll know how to associate your business with your prospects deepest emotional desires in whatever media you choose to use.

Let me explain in more detail and you’ll see what I mean…

….

#1: The first part of the Fundamental Trilogy is to know exactly what you’re selling.

At first glance this may seem silly. You already know what you’re selling, right?

Not quite. If you’re anything like most of the other business owners I’ve worked with, you know your product a little too well.

In fact you’re so ruddy close to the trees you’ve got bark in your teeth, let alone see the woods.

But don’t feel bad. This is easy to fix with a little exercise:

• Imagine you’re explaining your product/service to a big spending but nit-picking customer, and they keep asking “But what else does it do?”
• Then ask yourself how your product does what it does. What goes into making your product/service?
• Now imagine that nit-picking customer again. And this time they want to know exactly what will happen when they become a customer. What are the exact steps between taking on a new customer and giving them their order?

Describe every last little thing about what you sell, even the bits that seem inconsequential to you.

(It’ll help if you write down your thoughts as a list. You’ll need it later.)

Even on its own, knowing exactly what you sell – down to the smallest detail – gives you a massive competitive advantage. You can find things you do your competitors either don’t do, or don’t talk about, then use these overlooked points in your marketing.

This repositions you and guards against your prospects making like-for-like comparisons.

….

#2: Next up is to work out who you’re selling to.

Again, you already know this, right? Not so fast.

A lot of business owners think they know their customers, but most can do an awful lot better.

Skeptical? Ok, picture your typical customer and tell me are they:

• Businesspeople or consumers?
• Men or women?
• How old?
• Married or single?
• Rich or poor?
• Do they have children?
• Where are they? (Local, national, international)
• What kind of job do they have?
• What values/beliefs are important to them?
• Where do they hang out, online and offline?
• What problems do they usually have when they come to you?
• What are their hopes and desires?
• What do they fear the most?

If you couldn’t answer all these questions quickly, I suggest you find the answers.

It’ll be the most profitable time you spend this month, heck – even this year.

Why? Because the better you understand your customer, the easier it is to sell them what they want. You’ll find your customers will feel more comfortable around you, they’ll respond to your marketing more and you’ll close more sales.

Try it. It works.

….

#3: Making it happen.

Parts 1 and 2 of the trilogy are all about digging into what you sell, and who you’re selling it to.

This part is all about joining the two together and making sales. Now simply ramming parts 1 and 2 together is like hanging wallpaper without the paste.

It ain’t gonna stick.

So the final part is getting the glue that holds this all together — and our glue of choice is core human buying emotions. Us humans buy things to fulfill one or more of these 9 emotional needs (there are other similar lists, but the basic emotional needs are the same):

1.    Make Money
2.    Save Money
3.    Save Time/Effort
4.    Help the Family
5.    Feel Secure
6.    Impress Others
7.    Gain Pleasure
8.    Self Improvement
9.    Belong to a Group

(For real life proof, watch a few TV commercials with this list in front of you, and check off the needs they imply their product fulfills. When you do it for the first time it’s like seeing The Matrix.)

The magic starts to happen when you weave all these relevant emotional needs into your marketing. How do you do this? Here are a couple of ideas…

• From part one, look at your list of all the things your product/service does, and how it does it. Next to each item, write down the emotional need (or needs) it helps your customer achieve.
• Next, remember all the things you know about your customer from part 2. How would you tell your typical customer that their core emotional needs can be fulfilled by what you sell?

Take your time on these two points.

They’re more potent than they first appear, which means you need to use them with care.

If you make the link too obvious, you can appear crude and manipulative. The secret is to be a little subtle and imply you fulfill your customers’ emotional needs, without embarrassing your prospect or making them uncomfortable.

For example, most of us would avoid a clothes shop with a sign selling “fashionable trousers”, and decline a marriage proposal on a first date.

It may take a couple of attempts, but if you can elegantly associate what your business does with your customers core buying emotions, the rest of your marketing will effortlessly fall into place.

Whether it’s social networking, pay per click, direct mail, or anything else… If you remember the Fundamental Trilogy, marketing success is almost inevitable.

Now, if this all feels like “information overload”, don’t worry.

In the coming weeks I’ll be show you the simple, practical ways of applying these ideas to your marketing – online or offline.

Speak soon,

~George

Related posts:

1. Your Customers Don’t Like You
2. The F*ck ‘Em Strategy

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