Perspective is Everything in Marketing

As marketing professionals, we meet with clients who want to reach out to prospective buyers and entice them to spend their hard-earned money. With that as a goal, you would think that more thought would go into actually getting inside of the prospect's mind to find out what THEY are experiencing day-to-day and how YOUR product/service can help them. Unfortunately, most businesses feel that they have it all figured out... More often than not, they are way off.

It's not what you think the client's needs and goals are...it's what the client feels, right now, that decides whether or not your product is right for them.

Let's take a hard left turn and look at this from a completely different point of view. Remember 9/11? Of course you do. Remember the sinking, awful feeling we all had when the tragedy hit NYC and later DC? What if in the midst of all that awful chaos somebody walked up to you and asked "Wanna buy a timeshare in Florida?" You'd probably ignore them, scream at them, or just stare in disbelief. But on 9/10, your perspective at the time was completely different...and you very well may have been one of hundreds of people buying a time share that day.

Okay, that was an extreme example, but let's look at it from a business perspective. Let's say you sell a special kind of widget. It's made of rare form of wood found only in South America. For years, you've been selling these widgets wholesale to dealers all over the country. What you don't know is that small portion of the dealer community is getting a lot of negative feedback from environmental groups. They want to save the trees that the wood comes from, and have been asking for versions of the widget in a cheaper kind of wood and/or plastic. Although it's a relatively small number of dealers having problems...word is spreading quickly...and orders for the fancy wood widget have gone down considerably. What to do??

If you're like most...you'll chalk up the lower demand to the economy or some other large-scale factor effecting all business. But, if you're smart...you simply call up a group of dealers and ASK them what is up. It's amazing what great things come out of a small focus group. You'll uncover things that you would have never dreamed of. You'll now see things from their own perspective.

For our make believe wood widget company, they may very well find that the environmental concerns are unfounded. A simple direct mail campaign to all of the dealers would educate them about how the wood is not a rare species, and in fact...your company has been planting two trees for every one it cuts down. The design and print of a booklet is a heck of a lot cheaper than creating a new product from scratch or dumping the business completely.

Perspective is everything. From where your clients and prospects sit, the world is a completely different place than yours. Take time to put yourself in their shoes, and it can do wonders for your marketing efforts.