The Blocking and Tackling of Marketing

There is a story about one of the early Super Bowl winning teams and how the coaches prepared the players to defend their championship. When they reported for pre-season camp only a few months after proving they were the best, the world champions were surprised. And a little confused.

For the first few days of practice, they did nothing but block and tackle—skills they had learned in middle school. The coaching staff was smart enough to realize these champions needed to review the very basics of the game.

Why? Because the coaches wanted to win another Super Bowl.

Marketing has some important fundamentals, too. Because we are living in a time when marketing and advertising have been turned upside down, which has led to a lot of misinformation, misunderstanding and an astonishing misuse of money, this may be a good time to review one of those basics.

People buy products and services that scratch their itch. They have some want or some need and they purchase based on that want or need.

Simple.

Yet we have this strange habit of getting away from simple. We choose to be a little too smart for our own good. Maybe we think we know what customers want and choose to promote some feature we are proud of.

There was a heating and cooling company that moved to a beautiful new building. They wanted to show it off by having a big open house. We will have the newest and best HVAC building in town, they thought. Our customers will love it!

They learned a valuable lesson about marketing: People don’t care about what you have or what you do unless there is something in it for them. A homeowner with an air conditioning problem on a hot day couldn’t care less about an HVAC company with its new building. She wants someone to come to her home ASAP and fix the AC.

One of the marketing basics—blocking and tackling—is remembering your company or organization must provide a BENEFIT that customers need or want so badly, they will pay you money to buy it.

They have an itch. And your business should be all about how you can scratch it…..