This is a guest post by Sarah Worsham, CEO & Web Strategist at Sazbean Consulting and blogging at Sazbean.com. Sarah is passionate about helping companies reach their business goals by using the web effectively. Sarah provides guidance through Internet Marketing, Strategy & Business consulting.

Building on Tom’s great post yesterday - The Mustard Stain on Your Website – your website is clearly an important part of your corporate image.  It’s also important for your company to have a face.

What if you were at a large party and you were standing in the corner not talking to anyone, wearing bland clothes and trying not to be noticed.  Would anyone bother talking to you?  Probably not.

But that’s exactly what a lot of businesses do.  They’re bland.  They’re faceless.  They’re not interesting.

People are more likely to do business with a company if they have some sort of connection.  Be it a referral or emotional attachment or just some type of experience that puts a face behind a company.

Look at what Scott Monty is doing with Ford.  People can talk with someone at a huge company to voice their opinions and feedback.  Scott puts a face on a large company.

Social media and the Internet make it pretty easy to get your voice out there.  But don’t just shout out about yourself.  You should act like you’re at a party and you’re having conversations.  Remember the Golden Rule from Kindergarten?  It still applies.

Have a personality.  Be remarkable.  Don’t be faceless.

This is a guest post by Sarah Worsham, CEO & Web Strategist at Sazbean Consulting and blogging at Sazbean.com. Sarah is passionate about helping companies reach their business goals by using the web effectively. Sarah provides guidance through Internet Marketing, Strategy & Business consulting.

Sometimes doing business is a lot like being in kindergarten.  When you were 5 and the teacher promised you a story before naptime, you’d get really upset if she later told you she didn’t have time.  It didn’t matter that she let you do a bunch of other fun stuff instead of the story.  You just remember that you were looking forward to the story and you didn’t get it.

The same is very true in business.  If you make promises to your customers, you better make sure you deliver them.  It doesn’t matter what else you did for them, they’ll just remember that you didn’t keep your promise.  And then, similar to kindergarten, they’ll tell all their friends how you don’t keep promises.

Sometimes we forget the we make promises to our customers in the form of advertising slogans, sales, special offers, verbal agreements, etc.  Customers see a special offer as a promise by you to deliver what’s in the offer.  If you make claims that you can’t deliver, you’re breaking your promise.

Moral of the story?  Never promise or market or advertise anything you can’t deliver.  And even if you’re overdelivering – providing extra service – make sure you still deliver on your original agreement (promise).  If you can keep your promises, customers will remember – and tell others – and referrals are the best kind of business generation.

This is a guest post by Sarah Worsham, CEO & Web Strategist at Sazbean Consulting and blogging at Sazbean.com.  Sarah is passionate about helping companies reach their business goals by using the web effectively.  Sarah provides guidance through Internet Marketing, Strategy & Business consulting.

A lot of companies get caught up in how much they’re selling or how great a deal it is and they forget one vital thing.  Customers buy your products or services because of the benefits they provide for them.  Benefits equal the value of your product or service.  If customers don’t see value (benefits) in your products or services, they won’t buy from  you. (For reasons of simplicity, products will be interchangeable with services from this point on.  If you’re a service company, your service is your product.)

Customers will have their own ideas about what benefits they can get from your products, but it is also up to you to provide that information – up front and clearly.  Instead of talking about the features of a product, talk about what benefits a customer will get from using a product.  While listing features may be important for some types of customers (very technical or detail-oriented), many just won’t care, or worse, will be confused.

For example, the bottle of Diet Pepsi on the desk in front of me.  Why do I drink it?  A few reasons – I’m thirsty.  I want a bit of caffeine.  I like the taste.  Those are the benefits that bottle of Diet Pepsi is providing to me.  Do I care about it’s features? Calories, Total Fat, Sodium, Protein, Color, etc. Maybe.  In this case, I did want something with 0 calories, but that wasn’t my primary reason for getting something to drink, it was just part of the decision process.

Here’s the secret.  The benefits you provide to your customers (and how well you provide them) are also what distinguish you from your competitors. All your marketing efforts should be geared towards talking about benefits. Customers are very selfish – all they care about is what’s in it for them, so make it clear.

Now you have to deliver the benefits (and value) you promised.  But that’s a topic for another post….