IT Marketing: A Case Study

I was flipping through one of those junk mail advertising circulars that landed in my mailbox a couple days ago, and I noticed a colorful, full-page glossy advertisement on page two. This ad must have cost big bucks. Knowing what I know about advertising costs in my area, this must have been close to a $1,000 outlay (or more).
Avoid Poor Positioning with IT Marketing
But, it was one of the worst ads for positioning that I ve ever seen. To prevent you from making the same IT marketing mistakes, I m going to point out a couple of the biggest problems I saw. The headline read: Computer Repair, I Come to You. I Come to You isn t a unique benefit anymore. If you re doing strictly retail, of course it s a nice benefit that you make house calls. But most computer services firms aren t just going after retail customers anymore. With B2B, no one is going to lug their 25-node LAN into your shop to have you work on it. So I come to you is nothing unique a totally wasted headline. You just lost your window of opportunity to grab someone s attention.
Don t Mention Price in Your IT Marketing
Then the ad went on to say: Computer Repair A+ and Microsoft Certified Professional, Repairs, Upgrades, One-on-One Lessons and Tutoring . Once again, nothing unique. These things are just like everyone else in the business. But what caught my eye is half of the ad says in big letters with a color screen behind it: Don t pay $40, $60 or $80 an hour for computer repair! Call us! And then there s a big retail-looking coupon right next to it that says in big green letters: $20 an hour, in-home service . Well, I d like to congratulate this company. They win Joshua s idiot of the week award for poor IT marketing.
They re making every classic mistake there is! Mistake 1: They have no target. They re trying to go after their local slice of seven million small businesses and it s way too hard to do that. They re not even narrowing it down to small businesses. They ll go out and fish someone s stuck AOL disk out of their CD-ROM drive. They ll go out and repair a $79 ink jet printer.
Mistake 2: They re advertising price. Obviously this isn t even a price that could be sustainable. Do the math. Even at 75% percent utilization (very unlikely with this advertising strategy), this company is never going to make it. Figure 30 hours a week at $20 an hour. That s only $600 a week. There is no way this company is going to be in business for the long haul.
Mistake 3: They are saying nothing unique. This one is very important. What can you do that will help you be unique? You need to narrow down your focus and your specialization.
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About the Author
Joshua Feinberg can help you get more steady, high-paying computer consulting clients. Sign-up now for Joshua s free audio training on proven computer consulting secrets from the Computer Consulting Blog now at http://www.ComputerConsultingBlog.com



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