HWW #47 - How To Become Indispensable

Hey folks,Welcome back to HWW. This is the last issue of the big newsletter for 2008. So let’s make it a good one and talk about a topic that’s near and dear to a lot of people’s hearts.

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How  Do You Make Yourself (Or Your Product) Indispensable?
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It’s a fact, consumers and businesses are being a *lot* more picky about where they spend their money these days. Expenses are getting cut to the bone, and most costs that can be even vaguely classified as “luxuries” are getting tossed aside like 3 day old gum.

So, how do you keep yourself or your product on the list of “Must Haves” and off the list of “expenses” getting slashed?

Here’s a few quick tips:

1. Show An Immediate Return On Investment.

The easiest way to stay on the “Gotta have it” list is to show in no uncertain terms that you’re product or *service* makes your customers more money than it *costs* them.

For example, in my role as a high fallutin’ marketing mucky muck and copywriter, I can show pretty easily that for every dollar my clients spend with me, they earn several dollars more in profit that they wouldn’t have had before.

Which is great for me and others like me in the “Marketing” game. But how do you show ROI when you’re not in the “helping people make more money” biz? Good question. All you’ve got to do is . . .

2. Be The Cheaper And Higher Value Alternative.

Now, before we get into this, let me say right now that I’m *not* suggesting that you cut your prices. So get that part out of your head right now.

In copywriting there’s a concept called “comparing apple’s to oranges.”

That’s where you compare the price of what you’ve got to sell to much higher priced alternatives.

For instance, you might compare the value of a $27 e book to the value of a $2,000.00 in person seminar.

It’s an incredibly effective sales technique.

And you can do the same thing in your business.

Ask yourself, what were your customers (or potential customers) paying for before that they don’t want to (or can’t) pay for now?

And how can your service provide the same or similar results (or even just perceived results) at a lower cost?

Need an example?

If you’re a massage therapist, you could compare you’re high value massage against the cost of physical therapy, chiropractic or alternative pain relief treatments.

If you run a bike shop, you could compare the cost of a bicycle against the cost of gas, insurance, car repairs, gym memberships and . . . uh . . well . . . heart attack surgery.

And if you’re selling video game consoles you could compare the cost of a video game versus the cost of a night out, a movie or even an evening of bowling.

The key here is to make your customers feel like they’re *saving* money by *spending* with you.

3. Be Creative In Your Pricing . . . Make it Easy For Your Customers

I can’t even tell you how often I smack my hand against my massive noggin and bemoan how hard so many businesses make it for me to do business with them.If you want to survive in today’s tough times, you’ve got to make spending money with you the simplest thing in the world.

That means offering a strong guarantee (and standing behind it no matter what) . . . offering package pricing that seems like a killer deal and do everything you can to make your customers feel great working with your business.

And finally, the best way to become Indispensable is to . . .

4. Give people What They Want

This one seems obvious, and I’m sure I’ve talked about it before. But the single best  way to become Indispensable is to find out what your customers are worried about and what they truly want . . . and to give it to them.

Not what you think they want.

Not what you want them to want. (That’s the quickest path to failure.)

But what they actually want.

And realize that what people want when money is tight and times are tough is a lot different than what they want when things are flush.

Alright, that feels like about enough for today.

You can get more crunchy marketing goodness at The HWW Blog

Or you can get in touch with me by hitting reply at the top of this message.

Later.

C

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