Influential Marketing - tradeshowtoolbox.net

INFLUENTIAL MARKETING BEGINS IN THE MIND OF YOUR PROSPECT, NOT WITH YOUR OFFERING

Sometimes as marketers, we are in such a hurry to tell our prospects about our offerings and deliverable, we forget the importance of fully understanding what makes our potential customers tick. One might liken this kind of marketing strategy – such as it is – to that of giving the answer before the question is asked.

The result? To the prospect, our messaging describes stuff that looks a lot like the stuff our competitors offer – hardly the impact we’d like to make given the time and cost of getting the word out. All the more more discouraging, marketing centered on lowest-common-denominator marketing claims such as best price, highest quality and outstanding customer service is not influential, even if such claims are true and provable.

That there is something distinctive and valuable cradled in our message requires our prospect’s full attention and a measure of perceived credibility in what our marketing promises to deliver. After all, your offerings and mine, are not the only possible purchase choices afforded our particularly unique consumers. Thus, unless we dig deep to understand human behavior – and in particular our specific prospect’s behavior – chances are we will face a steep climb as we scale the mountain of resistance between our deliverable and the sale.

There are eleven axioms that apply to successful marketing. You may recognize many or even most of them since they are deployed by marketers that you admire and companies that control the lion’s share of their chosen industries. You will also see it is no coincidence that industry leadership, profits and these eleven axioms are tied together at the hip.

What is successful marketing? For our purpose, the definition is simple: Successful marketing is a collection of efforts and activities that favorably influence consumer behavior. Although it probably goes without saying, the most favorable consumer behavior is that of a decision: The decision to buy what we sell.

Thus, I hope you will tune in to consider each of these eleven axioms and how you might benefit from their application to your personal and corporate marketing challenges. You will find that, not only are these axioms straightforward, they are also practical in their implementation and promise often rapid, notable changes in your audience’s behavior.

So let’s begin.

Axiom #1: INFLUENTIAL MARKETING BEGINS IN THE MIND OF YOUR AUDIENCE, NOT WITH YOUR OFFERING.

PERCEPTION TRUMPS REALITY 

Wait a minute... I was told there would be no math. There won’t be, but there will be references to a small amount of psychology throughout our discussion of the axioms. In fact, understanding the basic psychology attributable to motivating consumer behavior is vital to ensuring that changes in your prospects’ behavior accrue to your benefit.

If your marketing does not intimately deal with the mind – your prospect’s mind – you cannot reasonably expect changes in your prospect’s beliefs and behavior. Or more simply, if you don’t successfully get your message into your prospect’s head, your can’t successfully get your prospect’s wallet out of his or her pocket.This principle applies to every sale, from consumer goods to technology and from banking to industry.

Psychologists describe two kinds of perception in human psychology: Perceptions that form above our threshold of awareness – I heard that, I saw that – and perceptions that form below our threshold of awareness – I believe that, I think that. While experienced marketers take advantage of both, perceptions formed below our threshold of awareness – our beliefs, our aspirations and our hopes – are more long term in their effects on behavior and are usually more influential in decision making. They are cumulative in their behavioral impact and they affect our values, interests and our personalities.

As we go about the business of marketing our goods and services, it is important to recognize that stimulating the senses differs from the brain’s interdependent processing of stimulation. Our ears hear sounds, but the brain perceives a melody. Our eyes see shapes and colors, but the brain processes these neural responses into distinctions between a painted portrait and the person modeling for the portrait. Our senses are merely portals through which the body gathers information. From here, the brain takes over combining stimulus with reasoning, environment, memory and experience to first classify newly accepted information and then to respond to our uniquely synthesized impressions.

With these basic behavioral considerations in mind, doesn’t it make sense to approach our prospects on a cognitive level rather than offering up a barrage of information about your product or service?

Consider how perceptions have defined America’s concept of beauty.

Recently, Dove (the soap company) recognized a growing problem among young girls. What was it? It was their perception of beauty and the idea that beauty was entirely defined as a specific physical appearance type. A National Report on the State of Self-Esteem, commissioned in 2008, concluded that The majority of girls (seven to ten) feel they do not measure up in some way including their looks, performance in school and relationships. Most disturbing is that girls with low self-esteem are engaging in harmful and destructive behavior that can leave a lasting imprint on their lives.

Personal perceptions are larger than life. Hence, deeply rooted beliefs more effectively influence consumer than do facts, figures and hyperbole. And what industry better describes hyperbole than the cosmetics trade?

Dove responded by reaching out to girls with its Campaign for Real Beauty and the Dove Self Esteem Workshops. Dove produced this video in response to the growing problem.

DOVE EVOLUTION

As you can see, in less than 60-seconds, an average looking young woman is transformed into a billboard fashion model, only however, with the help of an entire fashion industry at her disposal. Look carefully at the woman presented at the end of the spot and compare her with the young lady behind the facade. Who is she and where is the real reality? Are perceptions of beauty among young girls served well by the purveyors of cosmetics who define beauty so narrowly?

While for some this is a philosophical question, it should be obvious that, where beauty is concerned, perceptions trump reality. For better or for worse, the influence our perceptions have on behavior is significant.

CULTURE TRUMPS STRATEGY

Occasionally you’ll hear discussions about Marketing Strategy and its dominant, almost overarching importance in guiding sales and corporate growth. Indeed, marketing strategy is instrumental to these ends. Yet, while marketing strategy is entirely salient as to its impact on sales and growth, it is not omnipotent. Culture is.

When I mention culture, I do not merely mean the American Culture or the intellectual and artistic awareness of an indigenous people isolated to a given geographic region (although this too could be the case). Instead, I am referring to an audience constituency that is defined by common interests. That is, a group of prospects who, by virtue of their association with or their enthusiasm for a given industry, trade or activity, assume or contribute to certain behavioral patterns indicative of their chosen associations.

Consider engineers. As a profession that engages in logical, methodical, even rigid thinking, engineers as a group are a distinct culture. Real estate agents are uniquely cultural in their tomorrow-is-a-brighter-day-let’s-buy-a-house optimism. So too are sports fans, hobbyists, technology geeks and business travelers. Each group is a subculture within its larger, surrounding social fabric. Each subculture embodies certain behavioral peculiarities that lend reputation to its uniqueness. For the alert and thoughtful marketer, these behavioral traits can be used to your great advantage, strategy notwithstanding.

NATIONAL BUSINESS PRO

Did you catch the focus on who the Business Pro is? It’s you. It’s the business person that National makes feel important and an integral part of the National story. And the story is told in terms familiar to the business traveler. Does National understand their prospect and respond with compassion and empathy? If you are a business traveler, how to you respond to such acknowledgement? Do you feel like National gets you?

Your strategy is most effective when it is subordinated to the cultural peculiarities indicative of each audience you wish to reach. Failure to do so leaves you on the outside of consumer motivations and makes it difficult to influence the unique behavioral attributes that, as the audience perceives your marketing efforts, are not well understood and appreciated.

While sitting in at a sales and marketing meeting recently, a woman attending rose to address the speaker and mentioned that her company’s sales cycle was a long one. Obviously, she meant that, from her initial contact with her prospects to the close of a sale, the sequence of incremental steps toward the sale took some extended period of time.

What was interesting about her sales cycle comment was her reference to her audience’s unique cultural constituency: A religious group that limited certain types of business interaction with women.

Suppose you began prospecting among this group of potential customers, but were unaware of or ignored this particular cultural tradition. All the strategy in the world would not likely provide much influence. Your approach might even alienate your company and its offering.

CULTURE MISUNDERSTOOD – GLARING MARKETING GAFFES

Recall the last time you received some bit of marketing and, from the Subject Line in an email or the content of a printed piece, instantly realized that the marketer knew nothing about you: The marketer’s loss of credibility was instantaneous and irreparable.

When Chevrolet introduced its successful Nova to Spanish speaking audiences, no one in the marketing department realized that the moniker Nova meant No Go in Spanish. A rarity? Experienced marketing powerhouse Toyota experienced a similar kind of faux pas, although culture and perceptions were the challenges here.

In 1993, Toyota introduced an entirely new and completely redesigned Supra. The sleek, $42,000 Supra was a killer sports car from every vantage point. It outperformed everything from the venerable Corvette to Nissan’s then well-established 300ZX. Despite its revolutionary design and dazzling performance, the Supra hardly registered a blip in its share of the sports car market. Why?

To understand the reason behind the Supra’s dismal sales performance – in its best year its sales were roughly a fifth of that of the Corvette – one must look at the Supra’s heritage. In 1979, the Supra was introduced as an upgraded variation of the Celica – Toyota’s popular, although economy-oriented 4-cylinder lift-back. The Supra offered a larger engine, longer wheelbase and was slightly wider than its Celica predecessor. For consumers familiar with Toyota’s past offerings, the Supra was little more than a Celica with leather seats and alloy wheels.

In the years leading up to the Supra’s 1993 wholesale revamp and its introduction as a performance car, Toyota offered many improvements: Some small, some significant. Toyota delivered bigger 6-cylinder engines, a six-speed manual transmission and turbocharging. Even so, the Supra never was considered a serious contender among sports car enthusiasts, the culture that the 1993-model needed to reach.

By the time the 1993 introduction rolled around, the Supra had indeed settled into the American consumers’ mind share, but not as a sports car. The Supra was a well-built, upscale two-door fastback with adequate performance. For Toyota, this was the perception the Supra owned when the redesigned model hit showroom floors.

Supra’s problem would have been obvious to most first year marketing students but apparently, it was not so obvious to Toyota. Consumers could not reconcile the name Supra with killer sports car, despite Toyota’s efforts to buck the Supra’s cultural niche. The mere selection of a new name likely would have solved Toyota’s perceptual problem had it been part of the car’s introduction. Despite its better-than-the-rest performance, the Supra was discontinued in 1999 due to poor sales.

How can your sales benefit from the perceptions and culture innate to your audience? Simple! Before you decide what to say about your offering, first ask yourself what your prospect actually wants to know and how he will temper your answer given his cultural viewpoint. Usually, the answer will not reside in the details of what you offer. The answer will be found in the meaning of what you offer and in your ability to personalize and communicate this meaning to your prospect. Express the cognitive and cultural values of your deliverable. Begin your marketing efforts where decisions are made; in your prospect’s mind.