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A 2-Minute Tip - What's Your Club's Core Marketing Difference? |
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 John Jantsch’s marketing strategy breaks down into 7 Steps. The first Step, covered last week, was about narrowing your focus – identifying the ideal customer for your business.
The Second Step is about identifying your club in the eyes of the customer – Find and Communicate a Core Difference. You need to search for a point of difference, a way of describing your club that will be meaningful to your ideal customers.
One way of determining your core difference is to ask your customers.
In most cases the first answer is likely to be “The service is good”, “members of staff are friendly”, “the prices are fair” or other attributes that customers have a right to expect no matter which club they support. But they are not core differences no matter how strongly your customers speak of them.
If the response to a question does not suggest a core difference, ask “Is there anything else?” Ask your ideal customers the following questions and probe for answers you can use:
- What is the one quality of this club that will convince you to renew your membership next time it is due?
- Why are you here today?
- If a stranger asked you why you choose this club, what one feature would you describe?
Try to discover what attracts members and visitors to other clubs that are similar to yours. If you are visiting a similar club in a different area you might get the chance to ask questions in the course of normal conversation. Some of your ideal members might help you by looking for core differences at other similar clubs in other areas they visit.
Find out what your front line employees think about similar questions. Ask them to be friendly and casual researchers. A friendly question by the door person might dig out some surprising responses: “Hi John. It’s nice to see you here today. Anything special about today that made you visit us?”
Have a good look at what your competitors are claiming to be different, and what similar clubs in other areas are claiming. Look at advertisements and try to find core differences. You might even want to expand your research to cover other competitors such as hotels, restaurants, health clubs and so on.
This sort of research can be done at no cost but it takes time. Some clubs might prefer to allocate a budget for research and have external consultants find the answers.
If you do your research and find it difficult to come up with any major difference, then you may need to create your point of difference and then begin moving towards it.
Deciding on a core difference is essential to an effective marketing strategy and is not something to be done in a half hour discussion with your assistant.
When you have established an important core difference, then it needs to be communicated in every way possible. Your ideal target needs to hear this message time and time again before it begins to be remembered and believed.
From Step 1 you know the profile of the person you want to attract as a member or customer. Step 2 helps you decide what you want to tell that person about your club that will make your club stand out as first choice.
For more on this step 2 (as well as the other 6 steps) get the free 25 page report on 7 Steps to Marketing Success.
Next Week’s Tip – Step 3: Your Image and Products
Previous 2-Minute Tips and Blog Posts
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