Holy Grail

[ddredden]

The best marketing strategy in two parts:

1) Caring. Empathy as guru Seth Godin would proselytize,
2) Telling a story your community wants to hear and
3) Some form of virulent word-of-mouth to drive prospects to your business (avoid high ad costs).

How is your business currently achieving that?

So many are still indoctrinated on interrupting people with ineffective, boring advertising and offers treating people as numbers, and no measurement of results. If you can hit on these 3 macro-level points, you win.

 

[SARubin]

Perhaps you'd care to share your story with us, of how you personally go about achieving these points in your own marketing?

 

[ddredden]

The first two are connected. The quote you have as a sig does a preliminary job of summing some of it. There's nothing new here, just points marketers tend to forgot; not seeing the forest for the trees.

1) Go to where they (your prospects) are. Too often the pull strategy is sitting back and expecting them to come to use for nothing. When you have genuine empathy, you design your Product (not ads)/offering and promotions around the customer. When you have this empathy, you show up with generosity. This goes a long way into making something people actually want. All these 'growth hackers' finally understood the importance of marrying marketing and product development and the effectiveness of "the product is the marketing" when traditional promotional methods stopped provided the results they needed.

2) The way you all probably understand this is one word: psychographics. Nothing more powerful than going along with the conversation already in their head, as Halbert would say. This is how politicians really win elections and ideas really get spread. When you understand the worldview your target community shares, you have the opportunity to actually create a market for yourself and new channels you own. The rest of your marketing (P's and such) falls into place.

Ads do not give you (especially small biz or solo-preneurs) a chance to properly tell your story. Even more so when you consider we ignore most ads and they come a selfish POV in the first place (ignoring point 1 above).

3) "Ideavirus" and "Contagious" did a good enough job of explaining this. Or you can use a solution like Referrizer to explode results in this area.

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Instead of showing you how'd I'd do these - possibilities are endless - I'll share examples that already exist to illustrate.

1) As Seth said himself: When Marvel wants to launch a new superhero or movie, they don't blast us with unwanted advertising (at first). They go to Comic-con. When you go to where they are (physically in this case), you over implicit Permission to promote your idea to an audience that actually wants to listen. Following the adoption curve, the early adopters are who we target when we not only have a new idea, but one we consider to be share-worthy in the first place. Which is why Product is so important to nail down. They care enough to find out who the real fans of this segment are, and go say, "hey, this is for special for you. We don't ask for anything in return." They build a rabid fan-base who willingly share your offering in offline and in online media. This is the group who will kick start the word-of-mouth we seek, and create wildly impressive results - if you have the ability to grow and maintain it.

An old copywriter such as yourself is probably familiar with 'selling the idea or concept and not the product'... that was good enough in the simple Positioning era (and when you have an average product to sell to the masses; middle of the adoption curve), but it's not good enough anymore. Slapping marketing on at the end is weak because now? Too many channels and too many choices. The example below is actually much cheaper and much more effective in terms of ROI and 'brand building' (proper Storytelling - as in you 'get' them because you showed up to this event that only us super-nerds who are 'really' into this stuff go to. Therefore you 'must' be genuine, etc).

2) Story. This has two parts: worldview and framing. Story starts with a community who shares a (mostly) common worldview. Framing is how you 'tell' a story to the very people who want to believe it. Your USP, Positioning or Value Proposition... ALL of those factors should be baked into the service you offer so the client who wants all that 'gets' it just by the way you show up in the world.

An example off the top of my head. Exterminators. What are some competitive advantages you might use to sell? Speed? Effectiveness? Convenience? Every one offering this service within 100 miles of you competes essentially the same, and I know you know that.

- Green people have a worldview that includes "protecting the environment, for ages to come."

- Vegans have a worldview that includes eating healthy, and excludes eating meat and all animal cruelty (notice the phrasing used here 'animal cruelty' - that's framing).

Let's say that there's a community of people in the world who have a worldview that includes wanting to get rid of the bugs in their home, but don't want you to kill them to achieve that. They don't believe in killing bugs. You have an opportunity to present something just for them. How might you design the story?

You start with understanding that this same group probably also likes friendly service (as opposed to some gruff person showing up who acts like they don't want to be there). You'd have the empathy to feel what they feel and design accordingly. You don't offer 'extermination' services; you offer 'pest control' (framing). You don't 'eliminate' bugs; you 'get rid of pests', in your copy. You show or explain your process and beliefs on your website and other content, so they feel at ease before hiring you. Your people show up on time and don't look like the squad from Ghostbusters. Your people obviously have a process in place which shows your people making every attempt to be careful about how they go about getting rid of the pests. Making transparent containers to show the bugs are still alive. You might even explain how you set them back into the wild or send them off to where they'll be safe. You can then price your offering favorably because there is clearly, nothing else like it - for them - and they'll gladly pay and recommend you to other like-minded people.

On the opposite end of the attribute spectrum, you might be all about extermination for a group that hates bugs. In which case, your people show up looking like the A-Team. They use smoke bombs that look like grenades and flamethrowers. That really goes to the edges and attempts to send the Message - we WILL get rid of the bugs come hell or high-water. This is the Purple Cow they love to talk about... and believe me; it will get you talked about. "The cardinal sin in marketing is being boring" - Dan Kennedy

Now if that seems ridiculous to you, good. It's not for you. That's how you know you might have a good idea - when people say, "I would never" or "that's not for me" Till this day, I will not take an Apple product if you gave it to me for free.

3) I'm into results based Gamification so I tie in viral marketing concepts with human-based motivation principles. But here's an example of just being Remarkable in and of itself.

Example: you're a copywriter. You want a steady flow of clients, but decide you won't be using advertising. Well, then your best salespeople are those who have experience with your services. How can you motivate them to spread the word about you? Assuming you offering something worth sharing and show up in a generous way (points 1 & 2 above), there are options.

Let's say you're new and choose to show off your skills in a Remarkable way to get people to go to their acquaintances, "you have to see this!". You create a Facebook page or Instagram account. On this account, you take photos of old products and write original copy that shows how you might have sold them. You take photos and/or video of new products they might not know about and attempt to create interest. If they copy is unique and makes them go "wow, I'd buy that!", then you're on the way.

Here's a loose example:

Of course you'd want to target the type of people you can actually work with with your creations, otherwise it's just free value for the product creators entertainment for non-B2B consumers. This medium will eventually gain followers who eagerly anticipate your next post/creation and will share. Now you funnel them to your website or list and go from there. Let's not forget, you'd also eventually draw the likes of those who will pay you to reach your audience. Sponsorships and deals can ensue.

There's more drilling down on these points that could be done and certainly more to it all than this, but this is how I believe the marketing strategy should start (no 3 can be the exception for big businesses as they're usually already average and have money to spend to consistently reach the masses).

 

[VirtualGlobalPhone]

ddredden ; this is a good read. Thanks for sharing.

 

[ddredden]

Appreciate you guys taking the time to read.

 

[JeanLuc]

Thanks for sharing this! I like what Seth Godin says in his book Purple Cow: the best products market themselves. Design the product in a way that grabs attention and it will be that much easier to sell.

 

[ddredden]

Thanks for sharing this! I like what Seth Godin says in his book Purple Cow: the best products market themselves. Design the product in a way that grabs attention and it will be that much easier to sell.

Yes, I agree. That's what Marketing used to be about. People have forgotten any emphasis on Product and Placement (Distribution strategy). Advertising or (weak) Promotion is considered 'Marketing'. When you focus on making the best possible product for you audience, you can then create something that will 'sell itself' in essence.

Seth was and still is way ahead of his time with all this.

 

[SkyWriting]

1) Go to where they (your prospects) are. Too often the pull strategy is sitting back and expecting them to come to use for nothing. When you have genuine empathy, you design your Product (not ads)/offering and promotions around the customer. When you have this empathy, you show up with generosity. This goes a long way into making something people actually want. All these 'growth hackers' finally understood the importance of marrying marketing and product development and the effectiveness of "the product is the marketing" when traditional promotional methods stopped provided the results they needed.

Like when you go to the movies, you don't mind if they show previews of other movies first. Or if they promote popcorn. But any hardware store ads are not well received.