Print Marketing Is About Selling Value, Not Services

There's a common misconception that far too many marketers have that needs to be put to rest once and for all.

A lot of people still seem to think that if you're really going to carve out a stronger competitive advantage for yourself in an increasingly crowded marketplace, you need to make your services appear objectively better than everyone else's. You need to talk about how your products are better, stronger, faster, longer-lasting, more cost-efficient, etc. All this to steal as much attention away from your competition as you can.

In truth, that is a myth. You shouldn't be selling services at all. You should be selling the value that those services provide. In other words, the thesis at the heart of your print marketing campaign shouldn't be "here's what I can do that nobody else can," but rather "here's what I can do for you." Mastering this approach requires you to keep a few key things in mind.

Everything Begins and Ends With Your Customer

The art of selling value instead of services is one of those situations where buyer personas come in handy.

When you begin to come up with a buyer persona for your ideal customer, you try to add as much information about that person as possible. But once your persona has been completed, you shouldn't be asking yourself, "Okay, what do I need to tell this person in order to convince them to give me money?" Instead, you need to get answers to questions like:

• What problem does this customer have and how do my services solve it for them?


• In what ways will that person's life be easier after their purchase than it was before?


• What does that person want to accomplish, and how can I help make that happen?

Then, you work your way back to the products and services that you're trying to sell, thinking about the problem and positioning yourself as the solution.

A Whole New Approach

This is one of those areas where specificity will carry you far. Think about the individual portions of your sales funnel and what someone needs to hear at each one to move from one end to the other. Use this "value-centric" approach not to convince someone that the time is right to make a purchase, but to give them the actionable information they need to arrive at that conclusion on their own.

In the end, there are probably a lot of other companies in your industry who do what you do - but nobody does it in quite the same way. That key thing that differentiates you from so many others is the value that only you can offer and what should be at the heart of all of your marketing messages.