By Kelley Patrick, founder of Visionary Design Concepts.
Here’s the short answer: Customers don’t compare your marketing to your sales pitch. They compare what you promised to what they actually experience. And most of the time, the gap isn’t that you lied. It’s that you keep talking about what you sell while your customer is thinking about what they’re trying to achieve. Close that gap and the marketing you already have starts working.
Kodak didn’t fail at film. They failed at knowing what their customer wanted.
For decades, Kodak owned an idea. Not film. Memories. “You press the button, we do the rest.” The Kodak moment. Their whole promise was that they’d help you hold onto the moments that mattered.
Customers believed it. They weren’t buying film. They were buying their kid’s first birthday, kept forever.
Then the world moved. People still wanted to capture and share their lives, they just wanted to do it digitally. And Kodak, which had the technology to lead that shift, kept protecting the film business instead. SOURCE: Knowledge at wharton
So here’s the gap. Customers were buying memories. Kodak kept selling film. The promise and the experience stopped matching, and customers went to the companies that helped them do the thing they actually wanted.
Kodak didn’t lose because they were bad at marketing. They lost because they were talking about what they sold while their customers were thinking about what they were trying to achieve.
The same gap shows up in small businesses every day
You don’t need a billion-dollar brand to make this mistake. It’s just as easy at your size and it costs you the same way.
Picture a wellness practice. The owner is excellent. The website leads with the things the owner is proud of. The awards. The certifications. The years of training. The list of techniques, in the right order.
Now picture the person reading it. They’re not lying awake thinking “I sure hope she’s certified in blah, blah, blah.” They’re thinking “I want to stop waking up at 3 a.m. because my neck hurts. I want to feel like myself again.”
The owner is describing what they sell. The customer is thinking about what they’re trying to achieve. Same gap as Kodak, smaller scale, identical result. The visitor can’t tell that this is the place that solves their actual problem, so they keep looking.
Nobody lied. The work is real and it’s good. The message is just aimed at the wrong thing.
Why good owners, founders and directors describe the wrong thing
This happens to sharp, capable people for a reason that has nothing to do with skill.
You know your work from the inside. You know the craft, the effort, the things that make your version better than the one down the road. So that’s what you talk about, because that’s what you can see. The trouble is, your customer can’t see any of that and frankly doesn’t care about it yet. They care about the result they want.
You can’t read the label from inside the jar. That’s not a weakness. It’s just how it works. You’re too close to see what your customer needs from your message.
How do I tell if I’m doing this?
Look at the first thing a stranger reads about you. Your homepage headline, your tagline, the top of your services page.
Ask one question. Does it describe what I do or does it name what my customer is trying to get from buying my service?
“Twenty years of experience and advanced certification in deep tissue and myofascial work” describes what you do. “Stop carrying your stress in your neck” names what they want. Both can be true. Only one of them makes a tired, skeptical stranger think “that’s me, that’s what I need.”
If everything at the top is about you and your work, you’ve found the gap.
What to do about it
Don’t add more marketing on top of the gap. That just describes the wrong thing more often.
Start with the outcome. Find the thing your customer is actually trying to achieve, in their words, not yours. Lead with that. Then let your expertise, your craft, your credentials back it up, because now they have a reason to care about them. You haven’t thrown away anything true about your business. You’ve just put it in the order your customer reads in.
Growth becomes intentional, not accidental.
FAQ
Doesn’t my experience and expertise matter to customers? Yes, but later. It’s the proof, not the hook. A customer has to first believe you understand what they’re trying to achieve. Then your expertise becomes the reason to trust you with it. Lead with the credential and you lose them before they get to care.
Isn’t “what they’re trying to achieve” just a benefit instead of a feature? It’s close, but deeper. A benefit still starts from your product. This starts from their life. Not “our sessions reduce tension,” but “you want to get through a workday without your back deciding the afternoon for you.” Start where they already are.
What if I serve very different customers who want different things? Then you likely have more than one message to get clear, not zero. The fix is the same. Find what each one is trying to achieve and lead with it, rather than defaulting to a description of your service that’s safe for everyone and compelling to no one.
Who we are and why we can speak to this
Visionary Design Concepts is a marketing growth strategy company near Wausau, Wisconsin. We work with established leaders who’ve built something people love and run into a growth ceiling they can’t name. Our specialty is wellness, outdoor experiences, tourism, and agriculture brands. But the situation matters more than the industry. We find the real problem before we build anything, because that’s the work that makes all other work possible. We diagnose before we prescribe. We’re selective, we go deep and we’re not for everyone. That’s exactly what makes us right for the people who are ready.
If your marketing describes what you sell more than what your customer is after, that’s the place to start.