Take a quick survey of your customer-facing marketing materials. Grab a few brochures, a print ad, a direct mail piece or sell sheet, and look through your website. What kind of messaging approach do you use?

Many companies fall into one of two traps when it comes to their customer messaging: the capabilities/capacities trap and the information trap. Capabilities/capacities messaging is all about them. This kind of messaging says “We do this, this and this. And also some of this.” It describes what they can do, regardless of whether or not it’s actually what their customers need.

Informational messaging is a close cousin of capabilities/capacities messaging, in that it takes an “I’m going to educate you on why you should buy from us” approach. It’s still all about the company, not the customer, and still doesn’t address what the customer needs.

To build long-term relationships, you must make it about your customers.

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again (and again). It’s not about you, it’s about your customers. At least it should be. If you’re not using your marketing tools to speak directly to their needs and describing how your products/services solve their problems, you may as well be talking to an empty room.

Sales, especially in a B2B environment, are based on relationships – and on listening and problem solving. Not preaching about how great you are to anyone who will listen. Ever been on a date with someone who talked about themselves the entire time? That’s exactly what you don’t want to do. On a date or in your marketing.

5 questions to consider as you develop your marketing materials

1. Who are you talking to?

2. What are their problems, needs, pain points and goals?

3. What solutions can you offer that align with their business issues?

4. How do those solutions create value that’s meaningful to them?

5. How do you prove and differentiate these claims?

These questions will help you think about the key decision makers you can influence and the issues driving them to choose one product/service over another. In addition, making these questions part of a larger message mapping process will help solidify your customer messaging company-wide, so everyone – from the marketing department to the sales team – is using appropriate language to communicate with prospects and customers.

Relevant messaging comes from truly knowing your audience.

To speak to your customers’ needs, you must first know what those needs are. And furthermore, who your customers are. You might think of your customers as one collective group of people, when in fact, you might need to address different groups separately based on their individual needs.

If you sell widgets, the person on the customer side making the decision to buy your widget could be an engineer who values your product quality. It could also be someone in purchasing, who looks at nothing but price. Or, it could be the end user, who mandates the use of your widget in the finished product. These three audiences are motivated by very different purchase drivers. Using one generic message won’t help them understand how your product meets their need and alleviates their pain points.

How have you made the shift from focusing on your company to focusing on your customers? Tell us in the comments.

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