Is your marketing Swede enough?

This is a guest post from Enlightened Marketing protege, Andy Andrews. – Samantha

Every once in awhile my branding eye spies a major, worldwide brand acting as though it were one of our Enlightened Marketing perfect clients. (If you’ve got the Enlightened Marketing Branding Roadmap tool or taken part in a branding action group, you’ll know what I’m talking about.)

Today I read a post from an official Volvo blog, written by Dan, an old enthusiast who has been with the Swedish company for a few decades now. Dan was addressing a tricky subject – why the Volvo C70 is not included in a certain magazine’s “Top 10 Convertibles” list.

In his answer, Dan covers 3 key Enlightened Marketing principles – abundance mentality, having a focused brand with a portfolio of benefits, and the concept of perfect client.

For example, Dan notes that “A BMW is awesome to someone who wants the ultimate driving machine . . . Road & Track would likely see an M3 as a purist performance car . . .” Like enlightened small business owners, Dan isn’t afraid of alternatives to his brand. If he has a prospective client interested in “the ultimate driving machine,” he wouldn’t hesitate to refer them to BMW, a brand more likely to make that prospect happy.

In the next part of his blog post, Dan names the three benefits in Volvo’s portfolio: “Volvo buyers want a safe, stylish, comfortable car.” He also details the benefits: it’s comfortable because “a Volvo is about caring for the people who are with you.” If you drive a Volvo, you’re saying “We care about the way we look . . . soft-spoken” as opposed to “look at me!” Dan then spends an entire paragraph detailing the special safety features in Volvos, and even includes a video. Obviously, everyone at one of Sweden’s most venerable brands is completely clear about who they are, and how exactly this benefits their clients. Do you have the same level of clarity for your business? What’s in your portfolio of benefits?

But that’s not all: Dan ends his blog post by saying who his perfect clients are: “for Volvo, the most important overriding objective is protection . . . maybe we compromise a tad with other attributes . . . but we seem to have found a niche audience who likes what we do and believes in our promise . . .” In other words: they stick with perfect clients, because they know how to make those clients happy that share their values.

Are you working solely with perfect clients? There should be no excuses here!

Read Dan’s post.

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