Are Your Marketing Materials Client-Centric?

‘Knowledge workers’ are those who think for a living.

The term was first coined by Peter Drucker. He defined knowledge workers as high-level workers who applied their theoretical and analytical knowledge, acquired through formal training, to solve complex problems or develop new products and services in their fields of expertise.

He noted that knowledge workers would be the most valuable assets of a 21st-century organisation because of their high level of productivity and creativity.

Financial services are the ultimate information and knowledge businesses. Top performers in the industry are rich in proprietary approaches, methodologies and experiences – the primary tools for producing excellent results.

Many businesses short-change their growth by taking a boilerplate approach to their marketing materials. Their brochures, web sites and service descriptions tend to focus on what they do, not what their clients get. This has resulted in a crowded marketplace because so few have differentiated themselves from their competitors.

Top performers, on the other hand, take a client-centric approach. They tap into the repository of their intellectual assets to produce carefully tailored materials that are responsive to the problems, concerns and challenges their clients face.

This approach allows them to communicate the precise benefits of their collective wisdom – their ‘intellectual firepower’ – and their focus on giving clients what they need and want.

Whenever prospective clients read your website material, brochures or service descriptions, there are three questions they will ask:

Who are you?

What do you do, and for whom?

What value can you bring to my business?

Your marketing materials should answer these questions. They should address your ideal clients’ problems, concerns and opportunities, and then show the ways in which you bring value to the situation. Always emphasise what’s in it for your clients and not for you. This is often easier said than done, but it’s a critical step in the overall marketing process.

It all boils down to one main thing. Make sure your marketing materials – and everyone who works in your business – are outwardly oriented (towards the client’s needs) rather than inwardly focused (on your business). When you get this one thing right, your marketing materials will work for you and help you capture the attention and interest of prospective clients.

To help you reorient your marketing materials, here are five questions you should ask yourself:

Have we developed an ideal client profile? (You can have more than one)

Have we identified our ideal client’s problems, concerns and opportunities?

Have we clarified the types of outcomes we deliver?

Have we clarified how we want to be seen, and by whom?

Do we understand how are we probably seen at the moment?

When your marketing materials are client-centric, you will be better able to sense, serve, and satisfy the needs and expectations of your clients and prospects … and, of course, that will drive your growth.