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Look how beautiful the moon is

“Daddy, look how beautiful the moon is today.” My daughter expected me to chime in with her cheering.

Only that I couldn’t … because from where I was standing, I couldn’t even see the moon. It was obscured by a building. Luckily, I took a couple of steps to the side. It really was an astonishing view of the moon, an object that we see so often, yet not quite the way my daughter and I saw it on that evening.

Sometimes, to appreciate the beauty of something we need to look from the right perspective. We need to move to a different place.

If you’re wondering why your audience isn’t chiming in with your cheering, could it be that they just can’t see it when looking from their perspective? If so, then no amount of cheering from your side will make them see it. It’s obscured.

You need to show them a way to get to your place.

Everything that can be automated, will be automated

When you visit McDonald’s, you don’t need much human interaction, anymore. Go to a terminal, place your order, pay, pick up your meal. No need to speak even a word.

It’s much more convenient for McDonald’s, too. Three terminals easily replace one human and so they can sell faster. Plus, there’s no need to speak with annoying customers.

Everything that can be automated, most likely will.

Which makes the leverage for non-automated interaction even greater.

The crucial aspect is this: Can you provide a better experience than the automation? Can you put a smile on your customer’s faces in a way machines cannot? Can you leverage emotional labor to delight a customer in a way machines cannot (yet)?

If you can’t, your business might be in trouble sooner or later.

If you can, however, your business might be better positioned than ever.

Pitching to the masses

With Apple’s massive success over the years, it’s easy to miss that Apple’s greatest pitches were not to the masses.

Quite the opposite. Many observers dismissed the iPod initially (“A Firewire interface?”). Many ridiculed the iPhone initially (“No keyboard?”). Many laughed at the MacBook Air initially (“No DVD drive?”)

Steve Jobs embraced that fact. Knowing that he couldn’t sell a billion iPods right from the start, he didn’t even try to.

He didn’t speak to the masses. He spoke to the people who got it. Those who care for the same things Apple cares about.

That’s a crucial insight to understand the “reality distortion field”. This term was crafted by people who “didn’t get it” to make fun of the people who “did get it”.

Of course, what really happened was that Jobs intentionally resonated strongly with what mattered to the latter while – again: intentionally – dismissing the rest.

Jobs didn’t bother to make everyone fall in love. He gave the fans a reason to love the new product. He gave them a reason to be a proud early adopter. He gave them the feeling that Apple understood their struggles and built a solution that smoothly solves them.

And then, the fans spread the word. Slowly. The iPod took years to become a mass phenomenon.

What matters to your fans and how can you speak their language so clearly that it appears to outsiders as a reality distortion field?

If marketing was a bakery

We would probably hate cake.

As a baker, when your cake doesn’t taste great, the best thing you can do is to learn to bake a better tasting cake.

The default approach of many marketers is different. They will take the cake and decorate it beautifully. Invent a story about how the recipe is an ancient and long forgotten secret of someone’s grandmother. Throw some incentives in so you can get three if you buy two (although you might not even want one). And have a celebrity, who never tasted the cake, tell us how delicious it is.

And then, when you’ve tricked the customer into buying that piece of cake, trust erodes as the experience falls short of the expectation.

The first bite is with the eye. But sooner or later, the customer gets to experience the actual taste. If the actual bite isn’t great, that first impression will quickly be forgotten.

The default approach to marketing is prone to deception: Give me what you have and I will make it appear attractive and find ways to persuade a customer to buy it.

Lighting the path is different because it starts with a great cake. You decorate a great cake not as a means to hide a weakness but because it makes a great cake even greater. You don’t invent a story about the recipe to make it appear cooler, you tell the actual story because it’s fascinating, let’s say due to the breathtaking attention to detail in making the cake.

Now, when the actual bite confirms the eye’s bite, it builds trust. And we might fall in love with the cake. And buy a second one even without any incentive.

Don’t persuade harder, resonate stronger!

Traditionally, marketing is about getting the audience to do something. Marketers use all sorts of subtle techniques to gently (or not so gently) push or pull their audience in the direction they want them to go.

If the customer doesn’t buy, well, we’ve got to try harder and incentivise the purchase. Decorate the packaging a little better. Pay a celebrity to endorse the product.

Lighting the path is different. It trusts the audience with the decision to follow your advice. Because it turns out that people above the age of one prefer not to be pushed or pulled. They prefer to walk on their own (and are so much more loyal when they do).

This can only work when you start with empathy. When you deeply care for what matters to your customers. Then you’re going to build products that truly change things for the better. You’re going to understand their struggles and know what they strive for. And you’re going to speak their language.

Guess what happens when you solve someone’s struggle and explain it to them in their own language? They’re going to resonate. No need to push or pull.

Don’t persuade harder, resonate stronger!

The of course effect

Of course a tablet turns on instantaneously. Yet, before the iPad came out we were used to minute-long wake-ups from computer laptops. For many users, finding their device ready to use the instant they turned it on was a revelation.

Go through your office or your house and you’ll find dozens – if not hundreds – of these “of course” product features. The kind of feature that when you’ve used it even just once, you ask yourself how this could not have existed before. Why had no one thought of this before?

Many companies chase the wow effect in their marketing – a spectacular decoration of the product or a breathtaking story they can tell around the product – but overlook the fact that the down to earth “of course” effect is often way stronger.

What’s yours?

Trusting your customer

Let’s suppose your customer knows what you know. Would you trust them with the decision to buy from you?

If not then why not?

Is it because you don’t trust in your offering or because you don’t trust in your customer to make the right decision?

If it’s the former, fix your product.

If it’s the latter, try empathy. How does the right decision look like for your customer? Why wouldn’t they choose you? Could it be that they are right in not choosing you? Or could it be that they would choose you but you won’t believe it until they actually do?

The best marketing starts with trust in your customer. If you lack that trust, the best investment is to figure out where that lack comes from so you can adjust accordingly.

The furious entrepreneur

Recently, I met an entrepreneur who was furious at his audience. They just didn’t get him. Although he explained his idea in thorough detail and told them everything there was to say, they just didn’t approve the budget he needed to implement his idea.

He was really mad at them. Some weren’t even paying proper attention, one was typing on their phone.

But of course, the audience is always right. If you didn’t grab their attention, it’s not their fault. If they didn’t get it, they didn’t get it.

It just doesn’t matter how good we think our pitch is. It’s always the audience’s call. No one in your audience is obliged to understand, let alone like your idea. It’s your job to explain your idea in a way that gets their attention and resonates.

I asked the furious entrepreneur what he learnt from the experience and whether there’s anything he would do differently the next time.

To which he replied: “No, no! The pitch was brilliant.” He wanted to quickly move on and try it unchanged somewhere else – any change would just lose him time.

The slow buyer

Most businesses are obsessed with getting customers to buy faster.

While dismissing that the customer who buys slowly, after careful consideration, is more likely to turn into a raving fan later.

The magic ingredient that can’t easily be accelerated is trust. Trust can’t be built over night. Trust grows. Usually rather slowly.

But it’s the stuff long-lasting relationships are made of.

About coaches

There are two kinds of coaches. Those who give you answers and those who give you questions.

There’s a place for both but it’s likely that only one is a good match for you.

The one who has the answers tells you what to do to achieve your goals, the other one helps you figure this out for yourself.

In the first case you trust the coach to have the experience to know what’s best for you, in the second case the coach trusts you to have the ability to know what’s best for you.

In the former case the job of finding the right question is yours, in the latter case it’s the coach’s job.

It pays to become conscious about which one you need before hiring your coach.

(And if you’re a coach, it’s just as valuable to understand your approach in this regard.)

Spread the Word

Picture of Dr. Michael Gerharz

Dr. Michael Gerharz