I was in Spain last week with Hana, my fiancée, and we were staying at an apartment complex near Estepona in Andalucia. As part of the complex, there was a bar and restaurant run by a young entrepreneur Sam and his wife Kat.
On our last night, we got talking and he was telling me about his other business interests including a business called: Tony’s Tellies. This is a business that provides satellite and cable TV packages, installation and services to expat residents in the local area.
He is working with a very skilled and experienced technician and they pride themselves on providing ‘service with a smile’. Things are going pretty well but he said that he was struggling a little with his marketing and how to position the business with customers. He then asked me what I thought.
I said to him that often when communicating with customers the largest part of any buying decision is not logical but emotional. Therefore, I suggested that he should not just be selling satellite and cable TV as that is what most of his competitors would be doing. Rather, thinking about the demographic of his customers, expat residents in Spain, he should consider positioning his business as providing ‘a taste of home’.
The reason I suggested is that when we buy things it’s not always about the product or service but what we get from that product or service.
That’s not always as clear as it might seem but spending the time getting inside the mind of your customers will pay huge dividends for your marketing and help differentiate you from other ‘box-shifters’ or ‘product-pushers’.
