It’s too easy to change your marketing and not your product when sales slow — to simply put a “new coat on the same old dog”. Now, I happen to like old dogs. But if you haven’t changed, improved, overhauled, tweaked, blown up, or otherwise monkeyed with your product in the last 12 months, well, it might be feeling like the same old dog to your customers.
Your product is at the heart of your marketing. Changing it is your most powerful marketing tool. Think about it:
Everything, all your marketing and sales efforts, are designed to “sing the praises” of the product you offer. Maybe your product isn’t that new or interesting or unique anymore. All the changes in the world to your marketing won’t stop people from deserting it for a better product.
Change it
Add something and bump the price, take something away and lower the price. Both are improvements, something new to better fit the needs of current customers and attract new customers.
Blow it up
If everything about your product “blew up,” if you couldn’t offer what you offer now and your goal was to create, from the ground up, a replacement product, an AWESOME replacement product, what would it be? T-h-e u-l-t-i-m-a-t-e p-r-o-d-u-c-t! A completely unrealistic idea! you say. Okay, you can’t re-build your product from the ground up; what can you add to genuinely improve the value proposition?
We buy products and resell them as is, there’s nothing to change. . .or blow up” Maybe, but what can you add? You’d be surprised at how much. Free installation? Free shipping? Bundle the product with something else; an extended warranty, a service contract, a related product or service? In 30+ years I’ve never seen a situation where a product couldn’t be changed or improved.
Write it down.
Blow it up in your mind, dream a little, write it down — all that’s very innocent. There’s not cost or risk so far, right? Then, given reality, what can you do to change your product? Probably quite a bit.
Don’t be afraid to throw changing your product into the mix of things that can be changed. A better product beats a better brochure!
