Greetings Floor Dealers!

In 2007, I published my four-part series titled, 13 Deadly Marketing Mistakes. Now that the market is heating up, this topic takes on new relevance. Dealers are increasing their spending on marketing in order to grab ever-increasing market-share, so we’ve decided to rerun this series to help our readers maximize their marketing dollars. This week we’ll start with mistakes #1 and #2.

Mistake #1: Failing to promote your unique selling proposition (USP)

Most dealers try to be all things to all people and, consequently, they wind up using generic descriptions of their business. Look at any floor covering ad and you will likely see one of the following adjectives: Trusted, Friendly, Professional, Free Quotes, Best Value, 100% Satisfaction. These mean absolutely nothing to the consumer because they convey no clear, compelling benefit. They also have zero impact because everybody says it!

Another problem is using “cheap price” as your unique selling proposition. First, legions of dealers do it, so it’s not unique. Second, selling on price is a suicide mission that virtually guarantees that you will either 1) struggle indefinitely, or 2) go out of business.

Compare the examples above with Fed Ex’s unique selling proposition, “When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight.” This gives a specific, clear, easily-understood benefit to the customer. It focuses like a laser beam and gives the customer an obvious reason to use Fed Ex instead of all the other mailing services. Notice there is nothing in their USP about cheap price.

Ask yourself this question, “Why should my prospect choose my business versus any/every other floor dealer available to them?” Once you come up with a clear, compelling answer to that question, you’ll have your USP.

You can have multiple USP’s. For example, I teach dealers and their sales teams to use a “Prompt return call guarantee” on their outgoing voice mail. It basically says that the customer’s call will be returned within two hours or they get a Starbucks gift card. I also teach them to be aggressive in marketing their 30-60 day replacement guarantee. The more USP’s the merrier!

Mistake #2: Having no target market

There’s a marketing saying that goes, “If everyone is your customer, no one is your customer.” A gigantic mistake made by the majority of dealers is trying to be all things to all people. This leads to two problems:

First, in an attempt to reach “everyone” with their advertising, they cast a net so wide and so broad that it’s impossible to get any market penetration. It’s very, very expensive and time consuming to attempt market penetration for every single person in a geographical market area. Most dealers simply don’t have the deep pockets necessary to duplicate the “brand name building” they’ve seen done by corporations like Microsoft, Pepsi, Home Depot, and Lowes.

Second, in an attempt to speak to “everybody” they are forced to water down their advertising message. Instead of crafting a benefit-laden message aimed at a carefully chosen audience, they wind up using mass media (newspaper, television, and radio) to spread meaningless clichés like those mentioned above. This is horribly inefficient.

By contrast, if you identify your exact market—your ideal customer who desires your services and will pay your prices regardless of what the competitors charge—you can then build a message that speaks directly to them, then use a medium to deliver that message with pin-point accuracy.

For example, let’s say you decide to target doctors. You can craft a message speaking directly to them as doctors by including copy like, “As a doctor, your time is valuable, which is why we offer 60-minute consultation sessions where you will get the undivided attention of one of our expert flooring consultants. Plus we make after-hours sessions available for busy physicians.” You can then use direct mail to deliver your message to every physician in your area.

In the next installment we’ll cover the single biggest marketing mistake made by most dealers.

 

To Tons Of Customers!
Jim Augustus Armstrong is The “Coach”

Jim Augustus Armstrong is the President of Flooring Success Systems, a program that equips dealers to double their profits, cut their work hours in half and beat the boxes! Many dealers have totally transformed their businesses and their lives for the better after joining Flooring Success Systems.
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