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Articles filed in: Marketing
Selling The Benefits
filed in Marketing, Storytelling
Tell stories, don’t write descriptions.
Speak to hearts, not minds.
Paint a picture of the effect.
Tap into the senses.
Illustrate the impact.
Describe the joy, the relief, the pleasure.
Give people a reason to care.
Show them how you’re different.
Then let them know why it matters.
Image by Cliff Ravenscraft.
Create What People Want
When Ken and Nick lamented the passing of old-style pastrami and then decided to do something about it, they probably had a hunch that there were people who felt just like they did. Once they set to work tasting and testing and re-inventing the ultimate American comfort food they knew they were onto something.
Their artisan pastrami took them from a little farmer’s market, to a standing room only brunch at Ken’s old restaurant, to their hugely successful delicatessen called Kenny and Zuke’s.
Kenny and Zukes succeeds by creating what people want, by making food their customers will love, not by trying to make customers love their food.
It’s far easier to remind the right people of what they love, than it is to make everyone and anyone fall in love all over again.
Image by Allison O’Connor.
Why Startups Stall
filed in Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Strategy
It’s easy to start something today. Now that the gatekeepers are leaving their gates and the barrier to entry is lower than ever, anyone with an idea and an Internet connection can start a business. You don’t need a big staff on payroll or a factory to get the work done.
So more people are starting things.
There is no shortage of great ideas. The path to success though, is littered with great ideas poorly marketed. One of the biggest marketing mistakes new businesses make is neglecting the intangibles. Fledgling entrepreneurs and startup founders often concentrate all their effort on the tangible —the product, the business model, production, funding, and on and on. What sometimes gets forgotten are the ideals on which the business is founded.
While they are busy focusing on execution they neglect the fundamentals and forget to find ways to communicate that unique purpose to the people they want to reach.
A great product and a good business model can get you so far, but a purpose around which to build a brand framework is what makes businesses and brands thrive.
It turns out that what distinguished the 50 fastest growing and most valuable brands of the last decade was an ideal. A reason for being. The intangible that was the foundation of the brand’s culture and story.
“Great brands and businesses do more than make great products and services. Great brands and companies change peoples lives.”
—Jim Stengel
Former CMO Proctor & Gamble
Apple, Zappos, Starbucks, Amazon, Innocent, Red Bull, Pampers, Google and Coca Cola are all on the list, but tiny emerging brands made the cut too. Even empires of one can succeed because they have a purpose beyond what they sell. And huge ones can fail when they forget the reason they existed on the first place.
Image by Mike Ambs.
10 Things To Do With Happy Customers
1. Treasure and thank them. Then work really hard to keep them.
2. Connect them to each other.
3. Reward their loyalty.
4. Give them platforms and places to engage with your brand.
5. Listen to their ideas.
6. Watch how they interact with your product.
7. Ask them what you could be doing better.
8. Harness their enthusiasm.
9. Ask them to tell others about you.
10.Never take them for granted.
Image by Vanessa Shaver.
Why The Price Doesn’t Always Matter
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
At the start of the last school year as I stood in a queue I overheard a mother asking an assistant if the $200 calculator she was holding would be coming down in price. The assistant replied that this had been the price for a while, pointing out that the calculator was only required for certain levels of maths. Of course the mother bought the calculator. “Oh well we’ll take it then, because he will be doing advanced maths next year,” she said.
For a long time marketers thought that rational human beings made decisions based on the facts alone. So advertising was designed to help us to weigh up the benefits versus the costs. The truth is that being human means we rationalize all the time, and that most buying decisions we make have little or nothing to do with price.
That’s why we stand in line for twenty minutes at trendy cafes, to pay $4 for a cup of coffee served in a paper cup. It’s also why we spend $23 billion a year on vitamin supplements even though we have no idea if they work.
Value for money then is subjective.
The price of your product or service is part of a story that your customers want to tell themselves. I’m worth it. He cares. Our kid’s success matters.
What story are you enabling your customers to tell?
Image by Apun Pital.
Marketing Is All About Values
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
In 1997 Steve Jobs was unhappy about how much Apple was spending on marketing and about the message the company was communicating. He realised that in an increasingly noisy world the chances for any company to be remembered were diminishing and that Apple needed to get really clear about what it was they wanted people to remember.
So he asked himself these three questions.
Who is Apple?
What do we stand for?
Where do we fit in this world?
And came up with this elegant answer.
“What we’re about isn’t making boxes for people to get their jobs done, although we do that well. Apple’s about something more than that. Apple’s core value is that we believe that people with passion can change the world for the better.”
—Steve Jobs
From this starting point Apple’s ‘Think Different’ advertising campaign was born and it’s said that this also marked the company’s re-emergence.
When you’re building your business. When you’re busy being good enough from day to day, it’s easy to forget who you are. Sometimes what you stand for and where what you do fits into the world gets lost along the way.
That’s why it’s so important to understand and declare your values at the start. And why working out what you’re not is as good a place as any to begin.
A Reason To Decide
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
She spotted the black dress just as she was about to give up. It was perfect. She imagined how it would cling in all the right places at the party on Friday night. And how she would feel when he spotted her across the crowded room.
The reason you buy the dress isn’t the same as the reason you only wear it once.
The reason you pick up the book isn’t the same as the reason you finish it.
The reason you choose the movie isn’t the same as the reason you’d watch it again.
And so it goes with your clients and customers.
The reason people decide might not be the reason you think. A big part of your work is to tell a story that gives them reasons to decide.
Image by Jason Hargrove.
Why Bother?
filed in Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Worldview
Why bother having a customer care line that informs of a thirty minute wait and asks people to call back later?
Why bother selling an awards based credit card, then capping the points your customers can earn?
Why bother creating cheap for the masses, when you can deliver quality to the few?
Why bother saying you’ll call if you don’t?
Why bother pressing send if you don’t care about the outcome?
Why bother asking if you don’t really want to hear the answer?
Why bother giving your restaurant a million dollar fit out only to cut corners on staff training?
Why bother saying you’re different when you’re clearly average?
Why bother telling me you care if you don’t?
Why bother lying when the truth works just as well, if not better?
Why bother showing up if you’re not going to leave the world better for your having been here.
Why not to be the best to the few and not just average to everyone?
Image by Montgomery County Planning.
Don’t Worry So Much About Awareness
Just the thought of the kind of marketing dollars the big brands will have invested in advertising for the Olympics is enough to make my eyes water. The result, millions of dollars worth of beautifully shot, feel good commercials that probably won’t sell many more phone plans or gold cards.
Awareness, not sales is their goal. The big brands pay handsomely to keep themselves top of mind. But you don’t have to.
Your goal is not to make better adverts. Your goal is to tell the best true stories you can tell about your ideas, products and services. You need to give people a reason to care, and to act, not just to make them aware.
Just like Ian Schon did with The Pen Project.
Image by Patrick Haney.
How To Attract More Of The Right Customers
How can you attract more of the customers you want to work with?
Easy.
Tell people who you want to work with.
Tell them with your pricing and your website copy. Talk about your values. Frame your scarcity.
Don’t be afraid to spell it out.
When Tiffany & Co (who position themselves as the world’s premier jeweller), found that they were growing through sales of an entry priced bracelet that was becoming ubiquitous among teenager girls, they withdrew it. They wanted to be seen as an aspirational brand, the place that those girls would come back to years later for a diamond engagement ring.
Leave people in no doubt, like my designer Reese Spykerman does on her website, by getting specific about the type of clients she works with, the time it takes to work her magic and her firm but fair pricing policy.
By closing the door gently on the wrong customers, you free up resources to delight the perfect ones.
Image by Will Cheyney.