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Success Tip of the Week!
Understand Market Psychology
To build a better marketing strategy it helps to know some basic business and human psychology. In the business world the marketplace tries to level the playing field. Commoditization is the process of making everything the same. Generally speaking, commodities are bought and sold on the basis of price. When everything is a commodity, price becomes the major differentiating factor. A can of beans is the same from one grocery store to another.

This is especially true when it comes to technical and professional services. Insurance companies, regulatory agencies, and licensing boards which stipulate minimum standards-of-care, all work to “commoditize” the marketplace. A filling is a filling is a filling, and heart surgery here is as good as heart surgery there. How could insurance reimburse the services on any other basis? Generally speaking, a home contractor or brain surgeon is no worse than the minimum standards set by their boards, the courts, or the building inspection department.

While this might be how things work in the big picture of things (it obviously is how the “system” works), it doesn’t apply at the individual level. Nobody in their right mind would brag about saving $50 on a retinal reattachment procedure because they found a discount coupon for eye surgery in the Giant Nickel classified section. We just don’t go out looking for bargains or discounts in brain surgery, heart bypasses, or parachute packers.

The point is that on the front end nobody seeks to do important business with people who are just average, normal or ordinary. Nobody would on purpose seek out a physician who was below average; everybody’s doctor graduated in the top half of their class. Everybody hires a home decorator who is very talented, and everybody chooses a dentist who is really very good. To admit or hope otherwise would be to admit your own stupidity!

When you understand the marketplace wants equality, but that people individually pride themselves on making intelligent consumer decisions, this knowledge will help you build a marketing strategy that gets you noticed.

How? By realizing that most small business and health professionals DON’T understand this! They are all so busy beating the dead horses of price and quality, that they don’t realize how they can gain advantage through the novel services they offer and how they package themselves and present themselves to the public. They overlook important positioning strategies that will favor them in the minds of the marketplace, in spite of price or a value conscious public!

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