Marketing Minute: The Importance of Being Early

Here’s the way it normally goes …

You advertise for people to come buy from you because you want sales and you want them now. Your ads are designed to get people who are in the market to come into your store and plunk down their hard-earned money, preferably TODAY!

For example, you hold a bridal show in hopes of attracting people who want to buy an engagement ring. You want these people to buy from you because it usually represents a sale substantially larger than your average ticket.

There’s only one problem with all this.

Every competing jeweler in town, not to mention online, is chasing that same business at the same time with advertising that, frankly, just isn’t appreciably different from yours.

Let me make the case for a different approach. Adopting it will take great insight and courage on your part because adopting it will mean taking a whole different approach to your marketing.

You see, the approach I’ve outlined above is like hunting. You go out and find that sale and knock it down. Have success and you eat tonight.

Below, I’m going to suggest a farming-like approach. You plant your seed in fertile ground, cultivate it, nourish it and, ultimately, harvest the fruits of your labor. Have success with this approach and you eat for a long, long time.

I’m suggesting that you get in early. I’m suggesting you shift to a lead-generation approach on your advertising, wherein you attempt to get to prospects very early in their buying journey, perhaps before they even realize they’re a prospect.

With this process, the goal of your advertising is to capture a name and contact information. And to do that, you’ll have to provide them with a safe incentive. Usually, that’s in the form of information-- guides, tools and materials that are cheap or free to deliver, but that the prospect would find valuable early in the process.

When you offer to educate a prospect early, you have a chance to render value in advance.

But you also get to do these 3 key things:
1. Establish a relationship;
2. Render up-front value; and
3. Help them set buying criteria that inevitably leads right back to you and only you.

Establishing relationship refers to getting that precious contact information. It may be as little as a first name and email address, but it comes with permission for you to market to them further and directly.

Rendering up-front