First things first:
If you haven’t checked out this article about why mass marketing doesn’t work for small businesses, you should probably start there. It’s worth it, trust me.
The number one thing you can do to make marketing for your business pay off is to craft an RSO.
A Rock Solid Offer.
Here’s how you do that:
The Worst Mistake When Crafting An Offer
Let’s say we run a marketing agency and must create a good offer to attract clients.
Most business owners will come up with something like:
‘Call us today for excellent customer service and competitive pricing’
Or
‘We’ve been in business for 15 years, and we’re experts in our field’
Or
‘We can handle your ads for you we have done this for 100+ other customers’
Look around you, and you’ll see this type of marketing EVERYWHERE.
Here’s the major problem with it:
It’s B.O.R.I.N.G.
Generic. Doesn’t stand out. Doesn’t get your prospect’s blood running hot. Doesn’t even register when your ideal client scans headlines.
How do I know?
Because the competition can say the same thing.
The First Element Of Your RSO
When I tell people that ‘being boring’ is a big marketing problem, they usually start thinking about ways to make their stuff outrageous.
Laser shows, blinking lights, airhorn noises, and confetti, as well as throwing a flamethrower in there for good measure.
That’s not what I mean.
Oil changes are very boring to me. But if my care tells me it’s almost time to change my oil, it suddenly shoots to the top of my list of interesting things.
I start looking for oil changes and what do I see?
‘Changing your oil is important and good for the engine’
‘$150 oil change. Book here’
‘Protect your engine, change your oil today’
All that stuff doesn’t cut it because it doesn’t step into my world—the world of our customers.
And you know what my main question is about this oil change?
“How long is this going to take?”.
So, if you want to make it interesting for me come up with something like:
‘Book your 15 minute oil change online. Fixed in no-time flat’
That’s a great start for an offer. It’s not an RSO yet, but at least we’re progressing.
You don’t fix ‘the boring problem’ by being outrageous.
You fix ‘the boring problem’ by thinking about your customer, stepping into his world, and entering the conversation going on in his mind
That’s only one element though. A great RSO usually has three, so we still have two more.
We’ll talk about those in the next article in this series.