Here’s the complete guide to marketing success.
Ask yourself this question: “If they knew what you know, would they buy?”
Depending on the answer, do this:
If not, don’t even bother with your communication. Fix your product. Repeat.
If yes, all you need to do is tell a true story about your product.
Skip the bullshit. Speak with clarity. That’s all there is to it.
But really is it? Or when you say “That’s not much!” how few are we talking about?
The thing is that what’s a lot to you might be just peanuts to someone else. What’s peanuts to you might be a fortune to others. So how much is it really?
It’s the Curse of Knowledge at play. What’s clear to us might be totally unclear to our audience. They don’t know what we know. They have a different frame of reference than we have.
The tricky part is that numbers can be equally misleading. When you speak about “5 million”, is that a lot or just peanuts? And for whom? If you’re telling me that failure rates have dropped by 2% is that a lot or not?
If we’re trying to get our audience to see what we see, we need to look from their perspective and enable them to make sense of how much it is.
If you want to be seen by someone, see them first.
If you want their attention, pay attention first.
What are they proud of? What do they care about? What are their struggles? What do they desire?
Refer to it. Care for it. People love to have a conversation with other people about the things they care about.
When people want to be seen, they tend to speak a lot about themselves and ignore the fact that most people are concerned much more with themselves rather than with cheering for strangers.
Directing the light onto the people whose attention you seek is way more likely to get you their attention than directing it at yourself.
The bakery shows us one piece of each of their three most delicious cakes, each one more delicious than the other. Each one so delicious that we can’t resist. Each one so delicious that we’re dying to try the second one, too.
And when we come back, a week later, to try the third piece, we bring our friends. And the bakery will have enough cake for everyone. And maybe a fourth cake. And the next time, the friends bring their friends.
Too often we try to sell people a whole cake instead of a single piece … just an hour after they had lunch. So it’s no wonder they decline: “Thanks, but no thanks!”
Or maybe they are overwhelmed by the selection, all the more when we start to explain in excessive detail the recipes of all 32 cakes so that by number 25 they no longer recall number 7 (although they actually love cheesecake).
When we’re bursting with pride, we tend to speak far too much and listen far too little. We try to sell as much as possible and risk selling nothing at all. We oversell and overwhelm rather than satisfy and delight.
People don’t need to change their entire diet to eat our cake exclusively, let alone immediately. Let’s rather turn them into fans who come to us permanently and keep bringing new friends.
Many innovators spend an enormous amount of time trying to make us appreciate their innovation. After all, it’s the innovation that they sell and so for us to buy we need to understand how it works, right?
The problem, of course, with explaining an innovation is that it’s, well, new. Which is why it’s probably hard to understand. On top of the fact that a lot of people are not particularly eager to embrace the new.
And so, many innovators struggle with getting the love they feel they deserve.
A shift in perspective might help.
Because, after all, the innovation is likely a new solution to an old problem. Which is familiar to the audience. And easy to understand. They get it immediately because they feel the pain when you reference it.
And so, instead of making us get them, the innovator’s communication efforts might be better spent in getting us. Rather than making us appreciate their solution, it might help for them to appreciate our struggles.
Because when we trust that they do the latter, we might be willing to learn about the former.
Quite early in our lives we learn that when we fall from a tree, it hurts. We accustom to it and learn to be careful with which tree to climb.
Later we learn that fire burns our skin when we get close and so we accustom to it and learn to be careful with fire.
Even later we learn that an agenda slide is followed by a boring presentation and burns our time and so we learn to be careful with granting our attention to some communicator.
We rather tune out to think of more important stuff (or, to be more precise, what we consider to be more important).
Seems about time to remove some of the dangerous parts from our communication. And while we’re at it, turn it from a waste of time into a bargain. More concretely: How can you turn the 60 mins that someone is granting you into their best spent time of the day? And how can you turn your intro into something that makes this obvious right from your first word?
When marketers rave about one of the greatest ad slogans of all time, they tend to overlook the most important piece.
I’m speaking of the iPod ad: A thousand songs in your pocket.
A lot has been said about how brilliant it was to translate 3GB into 1000 songs. Because what’s 3GB, right? It can’t be overstated how much better 1000 songs is than the default tech slogan of “The 3GB MP3 player”.
And yet, the “pocket” is way underappreciated.
If the slogan ran like this: “The MP3 player that carries a thousand songs.” … it would still be better than “The 3GB MP3 player” … but not even close to Apple’s version.
What the “pocket” does is that it translates the slogan into a story. With this device, you can carry your whole music library (back then) in your pocket. It’s not about the device at all, neither 3GB nor MP3 (or AAC, for that matter).
It’s about you! You are going to have your entire music library with you. How cool is that?
Now, how does your product transform your customers life? Don’t stop at translating the numbers. Translate it into a story that relates to our life.
Did you say a word of appreciation to someone who needed to hear it?
Did you give to someone more than you needed to give?
Did you smile when they entered the room?
Did you call someone who missed you?
Did you encourage someone to say “no” to something that deeply troubled him?
Did you encourage someone to say “yes” to something she couldn’t find the courage to agree to herself?
When was the last time that this someone was you?
“This is me! This is exactly what I’m struggling with. This is exactly what I desire.”
And thus, you have my attention. I feel seen and heard. I feel like you get me. Which makes me curious to hear what you have to say.
Most marketing stops short of this … at “What’s in it for them?” It’s the obvious question to ask. People are likely to buy from you when they get more out of the deal than what they paid for.
And yet, it’s a question that remains stuck in the selfish interests of the marketer. I build something and then I want to make you buy it. So, I’m looking for reasons that could persuade you to buy. The underlying assumption is, though, that I’m doing this deal primarily in my own interest and that I’m just looking for ways to make you agree to it.
It’s a much different approach to first see and hear our customer. To get them. And then make them an offer that’s unmistakably for them. That solves a struggle that actually matters to them. One that’s primarily in their best interest.
It’s also easier. Once you adopt this perspective it becomes the obvious thing to do.
Let’s assume that your communication works. You’ve made us see the brilliance of your product. People are buying from you, maybe in large numbers.
How does life look like for us? What’s different? Can you make me see that future? Can you make me see myself in that future?
Painting that picture might just be the story that you need to tell to actually convince us.
Surprisingly often, this story gets bypassed.
Surprisingly often, communicators stop at telling us about the the problems of the present. They offer us a solution and leave it to us to figure out how the solution works out for us: Here’s a problem … here’s a solution … now, please buy from us!
But what will I get? Will it be worth it? How will life look like with your solution? I might not be willing to figure it out myself if it’s too vague.
The desire for a better future is what creates the tension that’s required for action. The more tangible, the more tension.
Yet, make sure that it’s a true story. False stories destroy trust. True stories create it.
