To Market Your Business Is To Validate, Legitimize

I spent nine hours last Thursday in a sales training seminar conducted by a colleague of mine. And as a fellow participant said, “that was simply a great investment of a day.” Indeed it was.

But the purpose of continuing education isn’t the point of this posting. I’ve read tons of books, countless articles, and many blogs about marketing – but one thing I heard that day helped me better clarify what it is that I do.

Sure, we all have our own definitions of marketing. My favorite has always been that “marketing is the art and science of getting and keeping profitable customers.”

But after last Thursday, I have a better understanding of marketing’s purpose. And that is to VALIDATE. What does that mean? In the context of the seminar I attended – it is part of a process. The process begins with three critical steps – establishing a rapport with your prospect, learning their critical problems or needs, and then demonstrating how your product or service solves their problems or fulfills those needs.

But a key element in that process is VALIDATING your solution, and yourself. It is defined as helping people believe you, trust you, and have confidence in you – to validate you. Or as my thesaurus says, “legitimize.” Some examples of what I mean:

1. Why do you think your marketing advisors encourage you to use testimonials? So you can have others “validate” you.

2. Why do you have a portfolio on your website? So others can see your past work – which validates your ability in their mind.

3. Why are business blogs exploding in number? Because they provide a forum to demonstrate your knowledge of your business.

4. And why do people like me write articles and blog postings? So we can attempt to demonstrate expertise, and appear more legitimate in the market place.

All those strategies listed above assist in helping you seem “legitimate” in the market place. Yes, we been told to not sweat the small stuff, but it is the little things like that help validate you in the eyes of your prospects.

And yes, there is so much more to the “validation” process than the few simple ideas listed above, but you get the idea. Looking at your marketing strategy from this perspective can be very helpful.

In tough economic times such as these, many small businesses often cut or eliminate their marketing budgets. This would be a mistake. They are missing out on a key mission of what marketing does for their business.

But in closing, a sales application: I have a small business I have been doing some direct response marketing for. Their business does not currently have a website, and I have been pitching them about the value of building one.

To date, I had not succeeded in closing that piece of business. After my session last week, I approached them again, and said that building a website was important to “validating” them in the eyes of their prospects, that not having one made them seem not “legitimate” in the market place, especially compared to competitors who did have one.

Well?

We start work on their new site next week…

Todd Schnick is president of The Intrepid Group, LLC (http://www.intrepid-llc.com/), a small business marketing shop. You can find his blog at http://intrepidgroup.blogspot.com/.