Page 74 - Duct Tape Marketing

Chapter 5

Create Products and Services for
Every Stage of Client Development

So far we have looked at marketing in terms of a target market, core
message, and image. In this chapter, we turn inward to take a look
at the products and services you offer to this target market to get their
attention, permission, and business.

Visionpace, a Midwestern software development firm, offers its
prospects free white papers (technical podcasts and training from
nationally known experts). Many of these prospects also take advan-
tage of their software coaching process, and eventually some of these
firms engage them to create custom software.

By having several ways for prospects to access the company’s
products and services, Visionpace slowly builds relationships with
prospects and clients as it offers them more products and services.

A Different View of Products and Services

Too often, businesses develop one core offering and hope to sell that
and only that to a target market. This all-or-nothing approach is limit-
ing from a marketing standpoint. Marketing is really much more like
dating—first a movie, then dinner, perhaps dancing, and then, maybe,
marriage, raising children, and spending the summers in your moun-
tain hideaway.

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