“MA, WHAT’S FOR DINNER??”

“MA, WHAT’S FOR DINNER??”

You’re probably heard it – or said it – a thousand times.

I’m not asking about all the various foodstuffs in the refrigerator; I’m not seeking for a tour of spice cabinet; I’m not looking for an overview of all the recipes in the recipe box.

Just tell me: “Chicken parm – 5 minutes!” Short, focused, clear.

Guess what? Your customers want to know what’s for dinner.

They don’t come to your website to sort through 22 options. They’re not interested in your 10-step developmental process. And they definitely don’t want to play guesswork by looking at all the raw ingredients, and trying to figure out for themselves what can be made of it.

Nobody’s got time for that. They’re customers with short attention spans, not engineers just looking for a new challenge. Here’s what they want to know, right now:

What are you going to do to help them with their felt pain?

And yet we tend to overwhelm our potential customers with a blizzard of TMI (Too Much Information) such that they are overloaded, and then…they go somewhere else. To a provider they can understand.

Here’s the deal – you only have a few moments in any presentation (including your website) to make an impact by answering the simple question, “what pain of mine are you relieving?”

Like what Douglas Karr recently did with his DK New Media site home page re-design.

I encourage the businesses I consult with to always distill their key message down to this: We ___(relieve this business pain)___ for ___(this exact target customer)___ by using ___(this differentiating superpower)___. 

That is the marketing equivalent of telling me what’s for dinner. It’s also the key to allowing your customers and friends to refer you – if you can paint this simple and clear portrait for them in one sentence, they can then know exactly who to send your way.

Get your go-to-market message down to that distilled format and you’re moving toward real clarity.

So, tell me (use the comments if you like) – what’s for dinner? How would you fill in that sentence?

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How can I help you gain clarity? Contact me and let’s make your messaging work!

Also on the blog: Aim at Nothing and You’ll Hit it Every Time