Shouldn’t you just focus on selling?
The other day, I was auditing the advertising platforms of a prospective client,.
This particular brand is absolutely stunning and they produce beautiful, high quality products that customers adore.
But their ads were falling flat – they just didn’t resonate with the audience and consequently, their results weren’t great.
Sadly, this isn’t an uncommon situation. There are far too many digital marketing “experts” who might be good technicians, but actually just don’t understand the communication aspect of a great piece of marketing.
When their usual go-to strategy for advertising doesn’t produce profitable results, their fall-back position is “let’s run more discounts” ????
And it breaks my heart! Let me tell you why….
As product designers, creators, inventors, or distributors of innovative products, we are NOT in the business of selling a COMMODITY.
Would you agree?
What is a commodity?
It’s a product, a widget, that is the same or similar to many others available on the market, with little difference between producers. Commodities usually operate on the basis of ‘lowest price’.
Productpreneurs, on the other hand, create and sell unique and innovative alternatives to the existing options available on the market.
So, you, my friends, are NOT selling commodities.
Which means you are in the business of BUILDING BRANDS.
There, I said the B word. Are you all OK with that? I know ‘branding’ is often a bit of a misunderstood subject…
Here’s the thing, though. I believe that you cannot be truly successful as a Productpreneur unless you do focus on building your brand.
And the story behind your business or your product IS your brand. It’s how you tell that story, visually, verbally and in the written word, that determines the extent of your success.
Let me give you an example…
Our client Ashlee from French Soda sells high quality, stylish kids rainwear in a range of fun, vibrant colours.
The French Soda brand is all about nurturing the ‘born explorer’. Helping kids to enjoy creative, active outdoor play – from jumping puddle olympics to making mud pies, and generally just making fun family memories.
Ashlee can tell people about her brand and products using such vivid stories – through words and images and video content.
Without these stories, this way of positioning her brand in the market and differentiating what she does and what she sells from the plethora of other kids brands out there, there’s no way Ashlee would have grown her brand as successfully as she has.
Your brand is the essence of your own unique story.
If you don’t present the authentic, unique “you” (you being your business and product), then your brand will just be a façade.
Think of your brand as a personality – if you copy another’s personality, you’ll just come across as unoriginal, shallow and inauthentic. In short – a copycat.
(And if you’ve ever been on the receiving end of copycats, as I have, you’ll know how heartbreaking it can be to have your hard work and original ideas so blatantly ripped off!)
But why is building your own original brand and telling your story so important when it comes to increasing your sales?
Let me illustrate the lie behind my opening sentence:
When you don’t focus on telling your story or communicating your vision, you essentially fall back on selling your product’s features.
This puts you in direct competition with every other product that has the same features or solves the same problem.
It also assumes that customers already know that your products are exactly what they need. (A bit risky to make that assumption…)
When you are in this position, how will the customer make their decision?
It will come down to one of two things: the lowest price, or the impact of the other brand.
And then you end up relying on discounts just get the sale.
Not a particularly rewarding (or profitable) endeavour, right?
But, when you can sell the story, the lifestyle, the vision?
THEN your customers will engage with you! They will SEE themselves in the story and see themselves using your product!
I don’t care whether you’re selling on your own website or to retailers, if you want to avoid the low-price discount situation then you MUST communicate your story.
And ultimately, this helps take the ‘sales’ out of ‘selling’.
So, get out there and tell your brand story.
Tell it in pictures, tell it in words and tell it in video. Tell it with your packaging, tell it in-store and over the phone.
Wherever your customers interact with your brand, they should feel like it’s the same story.
Need some help figuring this stuff out?
Let’s talk! Here at Productpreneur Success HQ this is what we do!
We help Productpreneurs just like you to build brands into household names, to get products into the hands of more people, and to grow profitable businesses.
