Last week I shared the concept of viewing your customers from a metaphorical 30,000-foot perspective. This means that you take a much broader, three-dimensional look at them on their journey through life, and prior to the point where they have a need for your product. That point on their life map is represented by the “intersection” where you and your competitors are vying for their attention with similar media and advertising. If you were the first business to grab their attention prior to the point where they have a desire for your goods or services, then you would be in a better position to establish your business as a trusted professional, and effectively eliminate the competition as a choice.
Business is ultimately about attracting and keeping customers by offering solutions with goods and services that uniquely satisfy their wants and needs. Those wants and needs will change as they move through life, and they are heightened when they experience specific events at the intersection of their lives that create added stress and require additional solutions. I refer to these events and changes as “Life Transitions,” and they act as milestones, or intermediate reference points in a person’s life. Almost all of our memories are established during transition points, or moments where life changing decisions are made that can take us on another route – for better or worse. Good decisions make good stories that we remember, and bad decisions make great stories that we never forget.
The starting point for everyone is birth and their final destination is to have lived a fulfilling life when their journey is complete. In between those two positions are numerous transition points throughout life that challenge a person to look for individuals and organizations that can provide better solutions to their wants and needs. Some of the major Life Transitions that many people will travel through on their life’s journey include parenting, starting school, employment and career development, engagement and wedding, pregnancy and birth, celebrating special events, moving and relocation, purchasing or renting a house, starting and growing a business, taking care of health issues, retirement, divorce, and coping with the death of a loved one.
When you view the lives of your prospects from a heightened perspective, you’ll see how each Life Transition is part of the continuous journey your prospects will encounter on their timeline road. The transitions also create stress in a good or bad way, and act as catalysts to trigger new needs and wants that were latent or did not previously exist. This drives individuals to seek out goods and services that they are motivated to purchase soon.
For example, when a couple becomes engaged, the event triggers a slew of needs and wants that will need to be satisfied before the eventual marriage. The bride, groom, and families will need rings, a cake, announcements, decorations, tuxedos, dresses, a bridal gown, photos, catered food, etc. Some businesses earn a large portion of their revenue catering to couples who are experiencing this particular Life Transition.
In addition, one Life Transition can be the catalyst for several other transitions. For example, when a couple weds, they may have graduated from school, are planning to move to a new location, and will possibly start a new career. In the near future, they may have a baby and experience parenting.
At the present moment, many of the prospects in your target market may be experiencing a specific Life Transition that connects them with you. Imagine, though, if you could figuratively use Google Maps to view your prospect’s life at the ground level, and then increase the altitude to an elevation that allows you to view all their Life Transition intersections that are before and after the ones you best serve.
Often, the specific Life Transition that you and all your competitors center your marketing efforts around is preceded by one or more transition points that are the focus of other non-competing businesses that are gathered at the intersections your prospects just left. Instead of doing what all your competitors do by figuratively standing at your prospect’s specific Life Transition intersection and just waiting for them to show up and take notice of your business, you should also develop beneficial relationships with those non-competing and complementary businesses.
I call them complementary businesses because they are focused on the same prospects as your business, but they are positioned earlier in the Life Transition intersection. In the wedding example, after a ring is purchased at the jewelry store and the bride accepts the proposal, many other businesses will be visited prior to the wedding date, such as flower shops and reception centers, to complete the process that ensures a successful wedding. It makes sense that a business visited later in the timeline should develop a mutually beneficial relationship with complementary businesses visited earlier in the timeline.
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