White, Dark, or Crispy? The Art of Offering Choices

© by Kevin Wirth – all rights reserved worldwide

Posted 12/10/04

Updated 12/14/04

Word count: 628

This past Thanksgiving I shared the holidays with some great friends. It was especially good because I was invited to take on the challenge of cooking the Thanksgiving turkey. Since I like to cook, it was a treat for me (translation: I got to have turkey and stuffing the way I like it!). As we were all sitting down to eat, and during the initial rush of everyone passing food around, I asked the 12 year old son of the host what he would like to eat, ‘white or dark’ meat? A puzzled expression came over his face and he remained silent. So I asked him once again, ‘would you like white or dark meat?’. His eyebrows went up, he crinkled his brow and then turned to me and said “May I please have ‘crispy’?”

Everyone at the table had a good laugh over that one, as you can imagine. But afterwards, as I got to thinking about it, I was struck by how well this illustrates a very important marketing principle. It occurred to me that he had no frame of reference for what I was talking about, and he could not deduce - even by looking at the meat on the table - what I was asking him.

This caused me to begin mentally reviewing what it must be like whenever I offer products to people who have no clue what I’m talking about when I say something like “joint venturing is one of the hottest marketing tactics around”. In the first place, many people don’t even have a clue about what a joint venture is, much less how to do it or how it would benefit them.

I had to mentally take myself back to a time when I viewed marketing as a concept for other folks (not me) before I could begin to appreciate one important aspect of my efforts to promote internet marketing tactics. Believe it or not, there was a time when marketing didn’t interest me, wasn’t even on my radar, and I had some very skewed perceptions about what it was. In fact, when I operated my first business, I failed to pay attention to the notion of marketing at all – and my business suffered because of it.

So, after this Thanksgiving laugh, a question began to grow in my head until it hit me like a ton of bricks: Do my customers in this global economy really understand the value and need for the choices I’m offering them? What is THEIR frame of reference? Here I am, telling them all about MY frame of reference – all these marketing tactics they can choose from - but is it even connecting with them?

It was an eye opener for me.

What about you, and your business? Do your customers understand the choices you are offering them, and the impact your products can have on their business? Or do you just put them on your website and expect them to come running?

Oh, and my host’s son eventually chose white over dark meat, once he finally understood what I was asking him. But (and I hope you REALLY get this…) before he could make that decision, he had to sample and TASTE both white and dark meat for himself. Giving your customers choices isn’t going far enough – you need to help them ‘taste’ your products and in doing so, help them decide what they want.

If you have comments or suggestions based on this article, I hope you’ll write and tell me about it! Just drop me a line at kevin@kevs-korner.com.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Kevin Wirth is the owner of KEVS-KORNER ezine, a FREE online newsletter offering articles, tips, resources, and a growing community where you can work with others to create and market products online. To join or investigate, go to www.kevs-korner.com, where you'll receive a valuable free gift just for visiting and more for subscribing to KEVS-KORNER.

To read an update of this article, please check here:

www.kevs-korner.com/resources/kwirth/articles/wdoc.html

You may freely reprint and distribute this article as long as you retain all the text and links.

Comments or feedback about this article?

contact Kevin Wirth, Editor of KEVS-KORNER ezine

kevin@kevs-korner.com

www.kevs-korner.com

PO Box 102, Southworth, WA 98386

(253) 851-3334 M-F, 9-5 PST (-8 GMT)

Please be kind, Pacific Time

To help you call your customers at the best time, please refer to my Time Zone article series.

To read the next article in this series, please click here.

I pay a bounty for any mistakes found in my articles. Just send me an email with the URL and describe what you found. I will send you to a link with a free gift valued at between $19 - $50, possibly more