On Marketing

One of the phases of customer communication is creating urgency. (See earlier post, Stages of Customer Messages.) This is particularly important for new products and services that do not have the support of an established segment or category. The challenge in marketing me-too products is simply to get the prospect to choose you over the competition. But with first-of-their-kind offerings, the biggest challenge is to get the prospect to make any decision at all. The biggest risk is that the prospect simply does nothing.

Of course, with business-to-business marketing you actually don’t create urgency. B-to-B sales are not impulse purchases. The “Act before midnight!” approach from late-night television just doesn’t work. So what can you do?

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