The Inside and Outside Reality of Your Business
The Two Sides to Your Business
Consider this …
there are actually two sides to your business:
First, there’s what I call the “inside reality”,
and second, what I call the “outside perception”.
Your Inside vs your Outside Reality in your Marketing encompasses everything you do, and everything that makes your business great. It’s all your skills: the people who work for you, your expertise, the way you service your customers before, during, and after the sale. It’s your systems, your operational procedures, your commitment to excellence. It’s your passion, and the way you conduct your business on a daily basis. Add these all together and they equal your value to the marketplace. That’s what I call the inside reality.
So, how’s your inside reality? If you asked your customers why they buy from you, they could probably tell you something quantifiable, specific and instantly obvious. They could point to specific benefits they enjoy when doing business with you. Then they would say things like, “That’s why I do business here, that’s why I refer my friends to come here, and that’s why I’m a loyal customer. That’s why I’m willing to pay more here, and why I keep coming back”. That’s your inside reality. So, your inside reality is all about what you do and what you are that allows you to perform better. However, your outside perception has to do with how customers and prospects perceive your company. The outside perception is developed through the interactions that your prospects and customers have with your business. Your customers will draw on their past buying experiences with you to form the outside perception of your business.
But here’s the problem. If you provide unmatched and unequaled customer service, and your customers absolutely love you, none of that matters to your prospects if, number one, they don’t even know you exist as an option, or number two, they see your Marketing and Advertising and, because of your inability to market your business properly, their perception is that you’re no different, or no better, or no worse than your competitors. I would estimate that well over 95% of all businesses are completely inept when it comes to Marketing, and the result is that your inside reality and your outside perception is perceived to be different.
Let Me Expand
Regardless of how good you are with your Inside and Outside Reality, your prospect isn’t going to be able to figure out your true inside reality based on your Marketing. You simply appear to be just another business that sells whatever it is that you sell. And don’t say, “Well, that’s OK because I have a salesperson, and when they get in front of my prospects, they’ll be able to educate them and close the sale”. Listen, that’s a great theory, but I can flat guarantee that even your best salesperson is never going to close a prospect who doesn’t know you exist, and therefore never bothers to contact you in the first place.
That’s why your Marketing MUST do the heavy lifting for you. Let your Marketing deliver eager, qualified prospects to your sales funnel. But here’s even worse news. Competition today is more fierce now than it’s ever been. How many competitors do you have right now in your business? Because that’s how many choices your prospects have, and that’s how many additional businesses they have to sift through and filter through as they attempt to reach a buying decision. And by the way, the Internet has only made the problem worse! Have you noticed lately that everyone’s going bonkers for Online Marketing? SEO, Pay-Per-Click, Facebook, Social Marketing! And rightfully so. Most prospects are busy these days and they start their buying process by researching online.
The Sad Reality
But, let me explain the sad reality for businesses that are advertising online when we discuss “Your Inside vs Your Outside Reality in Your Marketing”. They spend a ton of their time, and a ton of their effort and money, just to get prospects to their website. And guess what their prospects see when they get there? The same old, lame junk as “service, quality and dependability” that they saw in their lame brochure before the Internet was invented, as well as the same lame junk that all their competitors have on their websites. These businesses then curse their high bounce rate, and try to figure out how to get better-qualified traffic to visit their website. The reality is, they may be getting enough qualified traffic to their site, but they fail to realize that it’s their lame website that’s not converting their prospects as the real problem.
Everyone looks at the Internet as the end-all-be-all to all their Marketing problems. But the reality is that the Internet is just another medium to screw up your Marketing with bland messages that do nothing to facilitate the decision-making process of your prospects. Yes, the Internet is an important tool in your Marketing arsenal. But you need to have a great website, and that means you better fix your Strategic messaging that I talk about or you’re going to fail.
