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3 Lessons From A Marketing Superstar
I was just rereading Jeffrey J. Fox's marvelous book, How ToBecome A Marketing Superstar this week, and had to start jottingdown some notes to pass along. Fox has a wonderful knack fordistilling his hard-won wisdom into two or three page chapternuggets that others would have to teach an entire collegesemester to get across.
Here are a few of my favorites:
* NEVER USE WE. Eliminate the personal pronouns "I,""me," "we," "us," or "our" in advertising, packaging, salesliterature or anywhere else in marketing communications. "We" isabout the marketer and its story. "We" is in the first person."We" is a bad proxy for your brand name or company name. Yourjob is to draw the customer into the conversation by focusing onher and her story, her concerns, her headaches, her wants. Yourjob is to build brand awareness, not "we' awareness...Never use"we," "us," or "our" in the headline. The advertisement is notabout you, it is not about your success or experience or hardwork. It is about the customer and what the product will do forher or him. To confound this sin, these same advertisers oftenfollow their "we" with trite clichés like, "We put customersfirst," or, "We are committed to excellence."
* SELL CONSEQUENCES. Always communicate the consequencesto the customer of going without your product...It is alwaysmore effective to influence the customer by showing the cost,damage or loss they incurring right now by going without yourproduct. Few customers knowingly ignore consequences and thendeliberately buy an alternative product on the basis of a lowerprice alone....What is it costing your prospect right now to notbe doing business with you
each month? What other consequenceswill occur if she delays taking action right now?
* DIFFERENCES. If you flip through any small stack ofmagazines you will quickly find many examples of ads that informof such things as "our people make the difference," or "littledetails make all the difference," "feel the difference," oreven, "the right choice makes all the difference." These are allsigns of lazy marketers who have not taken the effort to thinkthrough what makes their product "different." And yet it isthese differences that are your selling points and even yourcompetitive edges (or are they just "wishful differences" withyour competitor having the real competitive edge.) If themarketer is too lazy to think through the differences andarticulate them, how can he expect the customer to do it forhim? If you can't illustrate to the customer why your widgetis different and better than the Brand X widget, he will eitherchoose based upon price, or by what his cousin Ernie thinks heonce heard someone say about your brand).
If you haven't read How To Become A Marketing Superstar yet, gopick up a copy. I'd loan you mine, but I'm still rereading it.
COPYRIGHT © 2005, Charles H. Brown
About the author:
Do you need to turn the written word into profits? Charles Brownis a freelance commercial writer located in Dallas-Fort Wortharea, who is available to help write professional web content,organizational newsletters, direct marketing material and othercopywriting projects for business and non-profits. Put Mr. Brownon your team today. Visit him atwww.bizwriterstudio.blogspot.com or you may contact him at817.715.3852 or charbrow@gmail.com.
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