Creating One Hell of an Offer – Stage One of Product Development

Let’s get into the thick of it!

Last week I talked about the importance of scalability – this is a priority for me in my business, and ideally, it should be for you, too, because time is a limited resource, and if all of your income is tied to your time, then your income will be limited, too.  And we don’t accept limitations around these parts, do we?  Not when we can get around them.  So the idea here is to develop ways to create value via automated systems supported by technology.  Key.

And this is where product development comes into play.  The series of e-courses I’m developing will support my business model by providing a passive income stream that, once the initial time investment is up, will be relatively hands-off.  From that point, I’ll simply continue to market them indirectly through content marketing strategies (my blog, for example.)

It’s interesting, because I’ve worked with many bloggers and small business owners who, even if they don’t want to admit it, secretly wish that they’ll be found, and magical opportunities will begin presenting themselves, and everything will just fall into place like a fairy tale.  However, if there’s one trick to making money, it’s this:  In order to make money, you have to have something to sell!  It’s mind-blowing, I know.  And that’s precisely why I’m developing these e-courses – no one can buy them if they don’t exist.  Fact.

However, before you can begin developing products or even service offerings, there’s one crucial step that needs to be taken first.

You need to get really, really clear on WHO, exactly, you’re selling it to.

A lot of people tend to skip this step.  They get a good idea and just blindly just roll with it.  But this is one of those things you’ve got to be very deliberate about.  I describe it to my clients as this:  Imagine a room with a lawyer, a welder, a 16 year old punk rocker, and a 82 year old grandmother dressed in a sweet little rose pink crocheted sweater.  Awwwwww.

Now, try crafting a compelling message that’s going to appeal to all of them in the same way.

Good luck!

Rather, you’d have to repurpose your message in various different ways in order to appeal to each different demographic, based on their interests and motivations and problems and needs and all of that good stuff.  There’s no way around it.

That’s why it doesn’t make sense to just blindly create a product without first figuring out who the hell you want to buy it.  You need to first figure out who, so that way you can create your product with their interests & needs in mind, and make it COMPELLING for them.  In other words, in order to understand what someone wants, you first need to figure out who they are and how they think.

For this, I always recommend creating an ideal customer persona who represents your ideal customer. Sounds lame, but it’s good stuff.  Personas are a tool of market segmentation, and will help you get really clear and make solid decisions regarding your product.  (And this doesn’t just apply to your product, by the way, but also to your brand in general.)

What does this mean?  It means sitting down and creating a fictional character that you can draw + bring to life, and literally taping him or her up on your wall.  (Get out the crayons, everyone!)  Everytime you’re making a decision regarding your business, you’re going to consult that character and think about what s/he would want from you.  I strongly encourage everyone to get ultra specific with their personas (giving them a specific age, name, race, clothing, etc.), and most people get freaked out by that – but…won’t that be too specific?  Won’t I be alienating a whole bunch of people?  The answer is no.  The reason is this:  Your target is not always your market.

This quote from Al Ries sums up my point perfectly:

“Look at cigarette advertisements, especially old cigarette ads. They
invariably show both a man and a woman. Why? In an age when most smokers
were men, cigarette manufacturers wanted to broaden their market. We
got the men, let’s go out and get the women, too. So what did Philip
Morris do? It narrowed the focus to men only. And then it narrowed the
focus even more to a man’s man, the cowboy. The brand was called
Marlboro. Today, Marlboro is the largest-selling cigarette in the world.
In the United States, Marlboro is the largest-selling cigarette among
men and women. The target is not the market. That is, the apparent
target of your marketing is not the same as the people who will actually
buy your product. Even though Pepsi-Cola’s target was the teenager, the
market was everybody. The 50-year-old guy who wants to think he’s 29
will drink the Pepsi. The target of Marlboro advertising is the cowboy,
but the market is everybody. Do you know how many cowboys are left in
America? Very few. (They’ve all been smoking Marlboros.)”

You can see this in action right on my own brand.  Initially, my target was young, Gen Y professionals disilusioned with life, craving a more meaningful career.  However, a greater percentage of those who purchased my book, You Don’t Need a Job, You Need Guts, were not young, Gen Y professionals; rather, they were mid to high level career professionals between the ages of 35-50.  And interesting enough, as my audience has grown, it’s the latter demographic that comprises the majority.  Yet, I still target it at Gen Y by using humor, down-to-earth speech, and just generally making business fun.  Typically, though, if a marketer had set out to target 35-50 year old mid to high level professionals, it’s unlikely that they would use the same tactics.  Tricky, eh?

That said, let’s talk personas.  Here are some main elements you should include when developing yours, so you can best cater your marketing message to that ideal customer.  (Mine, by the way, is named Kathy, for the record.)

• Sex
• Name
• Age (specific, not a range)
• Core Descriptors
• Education
• Employment History
• Financial Situation + Avg Income
• Career Status
• Marital Status
• Location (are they in suburbia?  The city?  Etc.)
• Core Motivations (What do they want?)
• Core Pains/Problems/Frustrations (What things are preventing them from getting what they want?  Ths is probably the biggest piece of all of this, because you need to position your product as the solution to those pains/problems/frustrations, capiche?)
• The emotions they feel as the result of those pains/problems/frustrations.  Most marketers don’t take it this far; I insist, because it’s the emotions you want to appeal to.  As we all know, people buy on emotions, not logic.  Get at the heart of the emotions they’re feeling!
• Perceived Limitations and/or Disempowering Beliefs (What things to do they wrongfully believe about themselves that could potentially be holding them back?  Specifically, relative to your product.  For example, one might be that they think they “never follow through,” so they’re hesitant to spend money on something that will go to waste.)
• Positive Words (What keywords, relative to your product, will appeal to them?)
• Negative Words:  (What keywords are ones that you want to avoid using when talking about your product/brand?)
• Ideal Outcome (What, ideally, are they hoping your product will deliver?  Think big picture on this, too – not just knowledge, but the benefit that having that knowledge brings.)
• Their Statement (Fill in the blank:  “I just need someone to _______________________.”)

Then, you’re going to GIVE THAT TO THEM.  You’re going to work to position your product in a way that appeals to this person.  Mostly, my favorite question to ask that I mentioned last week is:  What can I create that’s going to BLOW this person’s mind, and in what way?  If nothing else, use that question to guide your efforts and the money will practically print itself.  Muah. Ah. Ah.

Use your persona to guide everything you do.  I promise:  Not only will your marketing make way more sense, and be far more compelling, but it’ll also be a whole hell of a lot easier on you, won’t it?

A second step in defining your offer is to really assess YOU, yourself.  Some things to list out:

• Relevant professional experience (For example, for me this includes my background working in B2B marketing, my side business as a copywriter, my experience in outside sales, the two information products I’ve launched in the past, having built TMFproject into a self-sustaining business, and my work doing online marketing consulting.)
• Relevant personal experience (Do you have any hobbies that perhaps align?  Have you done anything that lends itself to your credibility?  For example, last summer I put together a cross-country tour across the United States with fellow digital entrepreneurs Colin Wright of Exile Lifestyle and Andi Norris of Instigationology.  We traveled from city to city, giving talks, hosting mini workshops, holding meet-ups, and consuming far too many alcoholic beverages.  But the one thing that was really important for us to discuss were the barriers for wannabe entrepreneurs – so you’ve got this idea, but why not execute?  In this way I got a much greater idea of the problems and challenges that members of my audience were facing – market research, if you will, and this is absolutely a selling point I can leverage.
• Certifications/Qualifications.  Yup – formal degrees, etc. still do hold weight.  But they don’t have to just be degrees – the fact that I was voted to Problogger’s Top 40 Blogs to Watch in 2011 counts.  Or the fact that I was given $160,000 and a laptop by the founder of Monster.com for being recognized as an up-and-coming entrepreneur.  I’ll be using these little tidbits as well in establishing my authority.
• USP – Unique Service Proposition.  Basically, fill in this blank:  “Buy this product, and you will __________________________.”
• Differentiation.  What advantages do you have?  What makes you different?

This will not only help you position your product effectively (there’s no point in having the best product or service in the world, if you can’t communicate the value effectively and get people in the door), but it’ll also help you sort out which elements, exactly, you’ll need to be incorporating into your product or service during the development phase.  Sexy, right?

And did I mention that there’s no point in having the best product or service in the world if you can’t communicate the value effectively and get people in the door?

Right.

Just making sure.  Because that’s incredibly important if you ever hope to make a profit.  Hire one of us crazy copywriters if you have to – it will be worth it in the number of conversions, long-term.

On another note, I’m still investigating the best platforms.  I like one called Kajabi – possibly better than Traindom, which I mentioned last week.

Andddddd, I’ve been giving the name of the series a lot of thought – who was I kidding?  I’m absolutely not doing anything typical (read:  boring) like bootcamp.  No.  No.  No.

Here’s one that I’m seriously considering – it feels good and fits my brand:

Very Sexy Business

And then, of course, I’ll have a killer tagline underneath explaining what the course series is.  It’ll be done up in an incredibly sexy, big, bold banner.  And it will be glorious.  This is why taglines are key, because sometimes you want a memorable name, but it isn’t able to clearly communicate what the product is.  Helllloooo, taglines!  Love you!

Okay, guys!  Hope you’re all having a fantastic week.

Until next time!

(You didn’t think I’d leave you without the song of the week, did you?)

Here you go.  To your crazy, uninhibited, wild, free-flowing, feel-good SUCCESS in 2011!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMOIUUS8GWo (Note the shout out to TMFproject!)

Ash