What is Watertight Marketing?

All this week I’ll be introducing the Watertight Marketing Framework – giving you the headlines on the key concepts explored in Part Two of the the book.

Understanding how real people really buy things is central to getting your business onto an upward curve. Your products and services can be the most innovative, effective, beautiful or useful things on the planet and still not achieve great sales results. It’s only when other people believe this that you’re onto a winner. Put a tick in every box on the Watertight Marketing Framework and you increase your odds of achieving this significantly.

The Watertight Marketing Framework

Their needs = your messages

First there’s the psychology of it all. For this you need to master The Logic Sandwich. There’s an interplay between the left and right sides of the brain. To win that new customer, you’ll need to appeal to both. You’ll need emotion to catch their attention, logic to address their specific requirements, and emotion to cement the relationship. Address these needs in the wrong order and you will lose the sale. This is about your message. It’s about knowing what to say, and when. See: Are you serving up a Logic Sandwich?

Their pace = your timing

As with so many things, timing is crucial. I want you to turn the normal way of approaching this on its head. Don’t think about how long you need to explain your offer, think about how you can explain your offer in the amount of time your buyer is willing to give you. Responding to the pace your buyer sets means more sales and longer-lasting relationships. This is about more than getting your timing right. It’s about earning the right to take up a person’s time. See: Are you earning the right to time?

Their team = your audiences

And then, there’s the outside world. Buying decisions aren’t made in a vacuum. I want you to think about who is on their team. That is, whose opinion matters to them as they are making their decision. When drawing up a long list of companies they might buy from, people may cast the net quite wide. This is becoming wider by the minute with social media taking root. But, as they get nearer to parting with their hard-earned money, they will tend to turn to a decreasing number of select people. You need those people to say the right things about you at the right time. This is about your extended audience. It’s about knowing who to talk to, at what point in the process. See: Is their team on your team?

Stay tuned for three further posts this week that explore the three areas of the Watertight Marketing framework in a bit more detail.

© Bryony Thomas | Cartoon by Simon Ellinas. Illustration by Lizzie Everard