(Photo by Mike Baird)

Everyone wants to know the secret to magically attracting customers to your business. Maybe it’s the name of your business. Or your business’s website. Surely it’s the SEO (search engine optimization) of the website. Or the graphics. Maybe the tagline. The price is important. But maybe you need to do more Facebooking. Or Tweeting. Or LinkedIn networking. Email blasts? Hmm… so what’s the secret?

Start by thinking of your prospective customers having a set of locks that are closed. The locks are preventing them from solving their daily problems. They want these problems to disappear (or at least be fewer or more manageable). They’ve tried a number of ways to open the locks, but to no avail. Perhaps they even tried to smash the locks with a big sledgehammer. Still no-go. The locks are weighing on their lifestyle (or business abilities). If the problems are annoying enough, they’ll pay to solve them. This is where your marketing must begin.

(Photo by macinate)

Key #1: Your marketing must answer the question “how can you help me solve my problem?” You’re not selling a product or service – you’re selling a solution. So, make it very clear who you’re helping, what problem you solve, how you solve it, and why they should trust you. Make it easy for a prospective customer looking around for solutions to easily identify that you’re talking to them.

Key #2: Don’t talk about you. We all tune out people who keep talking about themselves (me-me-me). So too with your marketing. Talk about your customers. Talk about people you’ve helped over the years. Talk about the results you’ve achieved. This helps your clients imagine trying on your offering and seeing the future.

Key #3: Use their language. If your clients use terminology acronyms, use them. If they use simple language, use it. Don’t try to be clever with your language – it won’t “ring true” to people looking to see if they can trust you for the right solution.

Key #4: Go where they are. If your potential customers search for specific terms, make sure your website is optimized (SEO) for these terms. If necessary, buy pay-per-click ads for these terms. If there are trusted portals that people use when starting their research, be listed there. If they watch television, create an ad for their show. If they read a specific magazine/newspaper, be listed there. And if you don’t know where they are, research first. Good research is cheaper than bad advertising.

Key #5: Measure your efforts. No matter how you think your efforts for key #4 (above) went, make sure you have analytics in place to help you understand how many people reacted to your message (or didn’t). By studying the results of your efforts, you’ll improve the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.

Summary: Great marketing starts not with something clever, but with a clear understanding of the needs of your customers. There’s always ways to add cleverness, but an off-target message will frustrate everyone.