Graham McGregor: What marketing game will you play in 2018?

What marketing game will you play in 2018? Photo / 123RF

I like to think about marketing as being a game that you play.

However it's a game where you choose 'how' the game is played and what rules you will play by.

Let me explain:

Regardless of what type of business you are in, you actually have a surprising amount of choice about how you market your products and services.

• You can choose which clients you will sell to
• You can choose how you are you going to position yourself to your clients
• You can choose how you will make sales
• You can choose how you are going to stay in touch with clients (before, during and after a sale)
• You can choose how you will add value to clients
• You can choose how you will explain the benefits of what you do for your clients
• You can choose the strategies you will use to attract new clients
• You can choose how you make a sales presentation
• And so on

So here's my question to you today...

What marketing game will you play in 2018?

For instance:

Do you want to become known as the Rolls Royce Option in your type of service?

In other words you are the most expensive option for clients to invest in?

Example 1: I've just interviewed the owner of a company that sells the most expensive rubber ducks in the world.

(And they sell a huge amount of these ducks at prices far higher than their competitors.)

Would you like to be known as the most expensive provider of xyz product or service?

Example 2: I've just interviewed a magician in the United States who offers his services for private functions.

He is easily 400 per cent to 500 per cent dearer than all his competitors yet consistently gets a lot of bookings.

Do you want to be like this magician and charge fees that are a lot more expensive than your competitors yet still get a ton of new clients?

Would you like to market your business with a Big Bold Statement?

I had the pleasure of interviewing marketing expert and best-selling business author Andrew Griffiths.

In our interview Andrew talked about the importance of differentiating your business from all your competitors by having what he calls a Big Bold Statement.

Here's a good example of how well this works:

Andrew was contracted by the Government to go out to regional Australia a while back and help small businesses that were struggling.

One business that he came across was a general store in the middle of nowhere in Queensland.

This old store had been there for a long time and an old lady ran it. The store itself was in two parts. One half of it got so full of old mining and farming equipment about 30 years ago that they literally closed the doors. (It was full of all this stuff still and the owners just moved the general store next door.)

The general store was on a through road and very few people were stopping to buy. Business was terrible.

Andrew was talking to the old lady running the store and asked her 'can you tell me how long it has been a general store for?'

And she said "Oh well over 100 years".

Andrew then asked "Is it the oldest general store in Queensland?"

Her comment was "Well it could be."

Now Andrew is a marketing expert, so he did some homework and found out that this general store was in fact the oldest one in Queensland.

So the big bold statement was he made this business... The oldest general store in Queensland.

Then he thought 'we need a bit more of a hook here, half of the shop that's filled with junk, if you have a look at it, it's actually very interesting. If we kind of open that door we could have people walk on in, we could actually call this a museum. And the path through all that stuff leads into the new general store. So we could have a museum and why don't we make it free entry for this museum as a great hook?'

So all of a sudden we've gone from a nondescript general store with dust on the side to the oldest general store in Queensland with a museum that has free entry.

And bizarrely this Big, Bold Statement literally turned the business around overnight.

Andrew got some very cheap signage put up that said:

The Oldest General Store in Queensland

Before long there are film crews from around the world filming this general store.

Busloads of tourists are stopping and getting out the front and getting their photo taken with the oldest general store in Queensland. They are buying food and drinks and souvenirs. It got featured on Japanese television shows, German television shows, it's in Lonely Planet travel guide books and so on.

Now nothing changed here apart from some signage about the Big Bold Statement.

Andrew turned a very ordinary business into something significant that stood out and all he did was come up with a Big, Bold Statement about the business.

My main point in this column is that there are dozens of different marketing games that you can play. And you get to choose the game you play.

So which marketing game will you play in 2018?

"Just play. Have fun. Enjoy the game." - Michael Jordan

Action Exercise:

What marketing game will you play in 2018?

- Graham McGregor is a Marketing Advisor and helps businesses who offer an expensive service to quickly attract ideal new clients. You can download his brand new 106 page marketing guide 'The Expensive Service Marketing Solution' at no charge from www.TheExpensiveServiceMarketingSolution.com