Knowing what you want to market to your clients and how you can market yourself effectively is the crux of every discussion and plan for your company. At Burgie MediaFusion, we work with our clients to help them figure this out in ways that will help them zero in on what they are trying to achieve when marketing products, goods, or services.
One way we narrow down our clients needs is through a process we call FAB-P. The beginning of this idea came from a friend in the industry and has now been refined by us into a very effective marketing tool for our clients.
What is FAB-P and how can it help you?
FAB-P consists of answering a series of questions to lead you through a process, building an understanding of what’s necessary and needed to move forward to the end goal: clearly understanding what it takes to market your service, product and/or company to your defined audience.
It is always important to remember that the point is not what you want to tell them – it is what they need from you! By completing the “proof” statements you start to answer a key question – what’s in it for me?
In our fast paced society filled with thousands of marketing messages, understanding how your company can help makes a huge difference. You can’t just tell people you can help. You have to prove how you have helped others.
But first, let’s start with step one…what are the features of your current business?
FEATURES of your business include:
What are the facts about your business?
What are you selling, promoting, services offered?
Where is your business?
Who are you trying to reach?
What are your features?
Next, let’s move to stage two; why are the aforementioned features good? What advantage do they provide to me? Remember the reason people want to know about what you do is so they can determine your value in their life. So what are the advantages to using you instead of someone else?
ADVANTAGES:
Why are these features important to the client?
Why are your features necessary?
Step three often gets confused with advantages. But in fact determining the ultimate benefit to the client is one of the most important steps.
BENEFIT TO THE CLIENT shows them how you solve their troublesome pain points differently. What do you do that is unique and how does it make my life as your client better?
How do your features benefit the client?
Do you save them time, money or hassle? (You should!)
This answers the “So what?” question.
Finally we get to the PROOF:
What can you show to validate your proof statement?
Have all of the above questions been answered and do you see clarity here?
The proof, as they say, is in the pudding. Powerful statements and taking the time to figure them out is one of the most important steps. Do you save time – if so, how much? I mean just to have a client give a testimonial is great but if you can actually determine that you saved me X minutes or X dollars – that makes me pay attention and want to use you.
Proof statements are often avoided because service based industries are fearful of making promises and/or guarantees that they cannot consistently fulfill. However, often times they miss other features that do have powerful proof statements.
Working your way through the questions leads you to the PROOF and understanding this will show you what you want to market! It isn’t enough to just promote your company without having a clear vision through the FAB-P work.
Utilizing FAB-P will help you and your clients when creating and building a marketing plan. As your marketing specialists, we would love to meet with you and help you create your best marketing plan. Contact us and let us know what we can do for you!
