There’s nothing new about getting your future clients or customers to notice that you or your company exist. If you sold fruit from a cart a hundred or so-odd years ago, you’d be rolling it down that street, shouting something like “Fruit! Fresh! Fruit!”.
The benefit of fruit to that particular customer was that it was, well, fruit: tasty, juicy, sweet. Until the moment that fruit wagon came down the street, it’s entirely probable that the customer wasn’t even thinking about fruits.
But that reminder that there was an opportunity, right at that moment, to make the decision to go out to the fruit wagon and possibly get some yummy fruit, was the only way the fruit seller could sell the fruit.
In this illustration, the fruit seller, – let’s make him a man and call him Jake – wasn’t yelling, “Jake. Jake here. I’m Jake.” He’s telling what he’s selling – fruit. Jake may have had the best fruit on the market, but “fruit” is the benefit to the potential customer.
Now, after a while, if Jake lives up to the promise of delivering what the customer wants, yelling, “Jake’s Fruit! Get fruit from Jake’s right here!” may indeed give him a competitive edge over the next fruit seller that happens to wander into his territory.
You might be able to see where this has gone: promotion means sales and correct promotion means identifying where best to get your market offer to the customer. It also means repetition, repetition and repetition. Maybe the customers don’t need fruit today, but tomorrow is always a different story.
