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You can have brilliant ideas, but if you cannot get the message across, your ideas will not get you anywhere. – Lee Iacocca
While growing up we all learned a behavior – if the message that is being passed on to us is boring and something we don’t want to hear, we simply ignore it. Nothing wrong with that. If it’s not something that tickles your fancy or makes you curious about the subject in hand, there is no reason to listen to that message or act positively on it. This behavior continues as we step into adulthood. And remember, your potential customers are no different.
Effective marketing is one that delivers the message about your business in a way that makes your customers listen to you. They might consider your product or service as something not required but your message compels them to give it a shot, this is when you know you have said something they want to hear. Let’s get deeper into this subject and analyze how we can make our potential customers pay attention to our marketing messages and hopefully act on it.
1.Give Them What They Want To Hear
Sound Wrong? It’s not. The key to effective marketing is delivering messages that your potential customers want to hear. This doesn’t mean that you have to take an unethical approach to carrying out this technique. There are many ways to promote a business to someone that might not need your products or services, but may think about it.
As a marketer you want your messages to be heard and seen by everybody. But just being seen or heard isn’t effective. It’s easy for anyone to look at or listen to your promotional message and nod in agreement but have their thoughts somewhere else. This is when you have failed to convey the message the proper way. You have failed to give your customers what they want to hear. Make use of words and sentences that are captivating. Add interesting sentences and information about your business to your vocabulary, constantly.
When you promote your business, do not worry about what you want to say. Think about what they want to hear and shape your efforts and messages accordingly.
2.Make use of Glamour Words
Sex sells and so does sexy words. A marketer is an artist and one of the best weapon a marketer can have in his arsenal are words. When marketing your business or products try and eliminate words that are commonplace expressions and descriptions that are dull. Your job as a promoter/marketer is to educate, and education in all sense needs to be fun and exciting to entice your customers.
The question that arise when exploring this subject is – What makes a word glamorous? A glamour word is something that has a freshness to it, something that is easily understood but is barely used. Persuasion is key when it comes to marketing and good choice of words can make the process much easier than you think.
Your choice of words is extremely important when sending out a marketing campaign or message. Think of it as a sharp knife that will cut the deal.
3.Keep Them Mentally Involved
Another important aspect of marketing is to stimulate your potential customers mentally. After being exposed to your marketing campaigns if your target market isn’t asking themselves questions such as ” Why do I need it? ” or ” Is the price justifiable? ” then your marketing message has failed to stimulate them mentally. Marketing is about making your customers ask questions to themselves. The answer is usually generated by them as well, the only thing is your promotional message helps confirm whether the answer is right or wrong.
Mental involvement as anything else is extremely important when it comes to marketing as well. If you are not making them think, you have failed! Marketing is all about providing clear, precise messages to the questions your customers ask themselves.
One of the main ingredients in effective marketing is making your customers ask questions, lots of them. That is when you have successfully stimulated their brains to make a decision whether or not to buy your products.
4.Tie In Emotional Messages In Your Marketing
We are emotional beings. Most of the times our judgments and decisions are made on the basis of emotions. Your customers aren’t any different. Creating an emotional message in your marketing campaign is of utmost importance due to its power to convert leads into sales. While marketing or promoting, think of ways you can tap the emotions of your potential clients in order to motivate them to buy your products/services.
What will your product do for the customer? Will it give them a sense of pride? A sense of achievement , relief or joy? Think of ways to portray your message in a way so your customers can see the emotional benefit from it.
Although not all products are used or consumed by people, emotional attachment to fulfill their needs is of great importance, simply because nobody else but the people have the money to break or make your business.
5. Become a Walking Slogan
An effective slogan is the holy grail of marketing. The reason is simple – you can walk with it. Slogans are a marketer’s best friend. Call it the shadow that you can create to follow you no matter where you go. As a marketer, you should make sure your slogan/message is visible by everyone that comes in contact with you. Have it printed on a shirt, a binder that you carry along or on your laptop carrying case. Possibilities when it comes to becoming a walking slogan are endless.
A quick tip: If you are planning on printing your slogan on a shirt, the best place to usually have it is on the back. If you have it on the front, most people will ignore it simply because they don’t want to look at you directly while reading it.
If a dog is man’s best friend, a slogan is marketer’s!
We would love to hear your views and strategy on marketing. Go ahead and market your own product and services through your comments. The best way to master the art of marketing is to learn from each other. Let’s talk Marketing, effective marketing!
PS. If you’re looking to create a dynamic slogan, check out the site we put together teaching you how – Creating Slogans!
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{ 7 comments }
It’s funny – a lot of people discredit (or don’t even think of) the emotional factor in marketing. But the simple fact is, if you don’t appeal to them on an emotional level, you will sell far less of your product than you originally would have.
Some emotions that appeal to marketers are fear, having to act now, enjoyment, a better lifestyle, etc. If you can’t promise something emotionally, then your product doesn’t have near the chances of being a barnbuster than it would otherwise.
Does anyone have some real world examples of effective use of the points above? Would be cool to see it in action.
@Jason – I completely agree. My strategy is to grab initial interest with an emotional hook then hand-off to content that lets them logically justify what they already want to buy.
@sterling – that is an excellent suggestion. One of the things we have planned here on MarketingHackz is to actually run case studies in which we take a product (or build a product), market it, and then learn from its success of failure. That includes everything from copy to images and distribution channels. As long as we do it right, I think it will be a great experience!
If all goes according to plan, we will be launching our first one in the next month or so!
@Sterling: Excellent point! I wouldn’t say I have myself tried all of them. But most marketers make use of slogan and advertisement in one way or the other. For example, a slogan on a binder or a notepad, a pen are some of the examples for
” Become a Walking Slogan. ”
As far as tying in emotions with your marketing messages goes, we see it all the time. For example some of coke’s slogans or advertising messages from past years were:
1. Enjoy
2. You’ll go better refreshed
3. The gift of thirst, etc.
Although it might sound silly these do tie in a feeling of satisfaction or joy in one sense or the other and we all know how successful Coke is.
As Jason suggested, as we grow we will be bringing in real life case studies. Once again, thanks for the feedback.
@Jason – I love the idea of tracking marketing progress while it’s happening instead of after its all done. Very exciting.
@Ritu – thanks for the illustrative examples. Quite helpful.
My favorite advice is from Harry Beckwith:
1. Your biggest competitor is not a competitor; it’s your prospect’s indifference.
2. Your second-biggest competitor is not a competitor; it’s your prospect’s distrust.
3. Your biggest obstacle is whatever stereotype your prospect has formed about you and your industry.
How true that is Dave. If you can’t display credibility or a buyer can’t trust you – you won’t be going anywhere fast..