| Marketing, Sales, and the Art of Persuasion |
| More things change, the more people stay the same |
Last week on Thursday April 22, 2010, Erik Deckers participated in the Strategy Session called Mistakes Small Business Makes in their marketing. Erik was responsible to talk about “The 3 Mistakes Companies Make with Their Blogging and Social Media. He will discuss the following:
I think he did a pretty good job.
Check it out:
An earthquake in China took place today. It was a doozy that registered over 7.0 on the richter scale.
Image is a copyright of the Associated Press
As I am going through and reading the reports, the news media are focused on the death and destruction of the event. Reports are 400 dead and possibly 10,000 people injured. The usual suspects causing the death and destruction – poorly built houses that are not earthquake proof.
Yet, in any of the reports, there is no explanation as to why there is an earthquake in the region in the first place. See, the region where it has occurred is not on the edge of a tectonic plate. So, why is the media not educating us why it happened and reporting on the geologic changes that are occurring underneath us? The earth is one big puzzle of pieces that collide and move. Could the earthquake in Chile have transported energy to the Indian plate which then has pushed itself up against the Asian plate?
I guess we will have to wait for Pat Robertson to give us the explanation. I am sure there was some ancient deal made where the Tibetans shunned Christianity to follow the bald headed guy in robes. The earthquake is obviously a punishment from God.
With these natural events happening all over the world, couldn’t we put the death and destruction angle down for once and talk about the science behind it happening? Not only are we a nation of geographically challenged, we are also a nation who are geologically ignorant.
Come on media, put some of the shock and awe away and include some education in your reports. If you need the shock and awe at the beginning to grab attention, fine. Put the education into the article to make us smarter for reading it.
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My colleague, Mike Seidle has writtien an excellent post on the use of fear in marketing. It is a topic I sometimes bring up in my own posts. He has nailed some good ones here. You can read his post at his site:
http://mikeseidle.com/blogs/indymike/09-11-04/fear-being-used-hack-people
Courtesy of www.howstuffworks.com
Ever wonder why the news cycle keeps getting more and more fear-centric? Why do political special interest groups spend so much on creating alarm? It’s pretty simple:
Marketers, the media and politicians are hacking your brain.
Before you get out the tinfoil hat, let’s discuss the security hole they are exploiting:
Your built-in capacity for all-or-nothing responses to fears and pre-wiring to overreact to threats.
Randolph Nesse, provides quite a bit of detail on this phenomena in is an evolutionary biologist who has spent considerable time researching all-or-nothing defenses. All-or-nothing defenses are very costly and appear to be like overreactions to a threat that is statistically unlikley to result in harm. Nesse has found that overreactions happen to work well in nature when analyzed over time. Even though a bird may abandon hundreds of meals because of passing shadows, the response kept the bird alive the single time the threat was real.
Overreaction is tough to unlearn. Animals continue to overreact for generations even when the original
threat has been gone for generations. This is why birds born in
captivity at the zoo still fly away when a shadow passes overhead despite a zero chance of being eaten by a predator.
So what about people? Here’s where it gets interesting. People have a capacity for overreaction to threats, too. How about our response to swine flu? It’s not hard for marketers to use Nesse’s “smoke detector principle” to manipulNoted security guru Bruce Schneider uses the example of a hotel evacuation because of a fire alarm, which as it turns out isn’t very to be likely to be caused by an actual fire. According to Schneider:
We tend to be poor judges of risk. We overact to rare risks, we ignore long-term risks,. We get risks wrong — threats, probabilities, and costs
– all the time. When we’re afraid, really afraid, we’ll do almost
anything to make that fear go away. Both politicians and marketers have
learned to push that fear button to get us to do what they want. – Schneider on Security
Schneider has understated what is going on. People who make a living influencing others have changed how they do their job because it’s just far too easy to push the panic button. People will respond predictably 99% of the time: react to avoid the perceived fear. Here’s how it works:
1. Paint picture of security.
2. Inject an easy to identify threat to the picture that gets the right flavor of fear.
3. Provide an easy safe place to find security.
Here’s one you’ve seen:
Political Version:
It’s so easy, a marketing script kiddie can do it. And unfortunately, it works.
Everything that even smells of something new gets a buzzword. I have visions of smartly dressed people with stylish glasses and fancy haircuts going, “let’s give a name.” Then we come up with a sample like this:
3-6-3 Rule
A Ton Of Money
Accounting Noise
Acquisition Indigestion
Across The Board
Active Box
Activity Based Budgeting – ABB
Affluenza
After The Bell
Agency Cross
Agflation
Air Pocket Stock
Alligator Property
Alligator Spread
Alternative Energy ETF
Alternative Investment
And Interest
Angel Bond
Angelina Jolie Stock Index
Ankle Biter
Anonymous Trading
Antitrust
Arbitrageur
Aspirin Count Theory
Sourced from www.investopedia.com/categories/buzzwords.asp
What usually happens is a small segment of the population actually understands what it means. People in the know sound really smart because they can repeat the buzzword and sound really intelligent. The Internet has spawned all kinds of them. Example: “It is important that your GUI design captures the eyeballs. Make sure that you employ search engine optimization (SEO), pay per click (PPC), and Web Analytics. ” The genius ones use a lot of them in many sentences. (Wow, he’s smart, he is buzzword compliant). And people buy it all the time. (I guess that why they work).
I will be the first to admit that I loved buzzwords too. I used to sit around with my collegues who dressed nicely and play the buzzword game too. I was a buzzword expert too. I would do it in front of clients and feel really good about myself.
There is one constant in human evolution. Human interactions have not really changed. Despite all this technology introduced into our lives, we as a species still function pretty much the same way. While we may not feed each other to lions, we find new ways to be cruel just the same. And our fears and desires are pretty simple too. We can still be made to fear and sex will always sell.
So, what is all this social media hype about anyways? What’s all this Internet stuff with My Space, Facebook, Linkedin, and Plaxo about? Well, the reality is human evolution in buying has gone from the bazaar to the store, to the electronic store. Buying and selling is still done on emotions. Doing it on the Internet is no different. Now we have to either visually or through words impact people’s emotional reaction to buying from us. Just like we did when people stood in front of our table at the bazaar. There is no buzzword to describe this. Businesses just need to learn how to sell in this new market. It is old fashion buying and selling that is going on today.
Cold calling is dead. People no longer pick up the phone and talk because caller ID says I don’t have time for people I do not know. So, they are changing from having the world come to them to opting into the world of their choosing. People are quorom sensing beings. They will naturally gravitate towards those people that have similar interest and become part of a community. Instead of going down to the Church Hall, they may now choose to join the forum on under water basket weaving because there are not many people at church who are into under water basket weaving.
Business professionals globally are also trying to connect with potential colleagues with like interests. They no longer pick up the phone and listen to sales people. Instead they pick and choose what information interests them or could help them. The challenge today is learning how to generate the information they would be interested in reading. Or, creating an environments that gives them the option to participate. Again, it is old fashion buying and selling.
In the end, humans have not changed. We are still creatures of habit. We still gravitate towards shared interest. The only difference is that we do it in a different environment today. So, if you peal off all the buzzwords and narrow down the basic human behavior we see today, success is simply watching how humans behave in their new environments. If you observe the Internet from this perspective, you will see that nothing has really changed, only the location where people congregate has.
I have been working with a lot of Entrepreneur’s over the last 6 years as a consultant, a business leader, and one myself. There are two types of Entrepreneurs and I have definitions for them:
1.Successful Entrepreneur
2.Unsuccessful Entrepreneur
3.New Entrepreneur
Not very catchy definitions are they? Let me define them based on their characteristics because the “New Entrepreneur” out there could save them self a lot of headache if they look for behavior that generally leads them to failure.
Sucessful Entrepreneurs
These guys are easy. They know the game. They understand why you build a business. They do it over and over again because they love the challenge. They are not in it for their egos, the idea, or the need to have President on their business card. They do it because they can’t do anything else, but build things and then sell it off. They get it started, then hand it off to people to run it.
Unsuccessful Entrepreneurs
Things just don’t work out for the unsuccessful Entrepreneur. More often than not, they keep on trying, and get it a little more right next time. They take the initial risk, but can never really get it moving the right way. Or, they come up with ideas that the market does not really need. Eventually, some become successful. Often, they give up and return to the safety net of a 40 hour per week job.
New Entrepreneurs
I have a lot of respect for people that venture out into their own or try to turn an idea into action. These are people that generally don’t fit into the corporate structure, are generally liberal minded (not to confuse the Rush Limbaugh listeners of the world, liberal minded means finding new ways of doing things from how it is always done. Or, it simply means outside the box thinking). Having the audacity to question how things are being done and suggest there is a better way to do it.
So the new Entrepreneur has this great idea! Then, they get excited because they could make a lot of money doing it! “I am going to be rich!” So, they embark on the emotional high of becoming an Entrepreneur. They become infatuated with their idea. It is the best idea and the only idea worth investing. Most need money to fund their idea, yet they don’t want to give anything up to get other people’s money. Their valuation of the business is way over inflated and they have no sales. Ego and control start to get in the way.
I have been involved in several start-up ventures and this is a common pattern that occurs. As I sit at the Venture Club and listen to new ideas being pitched around the table, the pattern is there. The “New Entrepreneur” is excited about their great idea, yet they cannot really articulate how to make money with it. Their assumptions about their market are not well defined and they do not really understand what it takes to get a business going. They don’t understand why no one will invest in their business. They are passionate about the idea and their ego loves the fact that they can now put President on their business card.
So what is important for new Entrepreneurs? It is all about sales.
When I was President of the Indiana Entrepreneur’s Alliance, one of the guests to our meeting made an important point. He said, everyone says you need and accountant and a lawyer to get a business started. So, everyone goes out and gets and accountant and a lawyer to make you feel good about your idea. This is backwards. He points out that you need customers first to determine if the idea has merit, then go out and hire an accountant and a lawyer. Is what you are doing in demand and are people willing to pay for it?
In other words, it is about sales and marketing. As a New Entrepreneur is weighing the idea, the emphasis needs to be on sales and marketing. Get the idea, product, or service out there and see if someone will pay you for it. Do you need an infrastructure to support it? Yes. Do you need to be able to deliver it? Yes. But figure out what kind of expectations you can put out there and manage. As another successful Entrepreneur told me, don’t be afraid of success. You can always find money, if you have a book of business to show an investor. And, you can always find ways to deliver.
In our web consulting, we see the New Entrepreneur all the time. Some people are looking for the “Mirror”. “Come in and tell me that I am great, my idea is great, and that you can sell it the way I want it to be sold, even though I have had mediocre success to date.” In our case, the web plays an important part for most customers trying to sell products or services. They focus on their logo and their image, their name. Unsuccessful entrepreneurs gladly feed into their egos and leave results starving at the table.
The reality is New Entrepreneurs need to focus on results. In business, results equal sales and profits. Logos, names, and images can have value – only if people buy because of the name, logo and image.
Get centered Answering the questions of the buyers will:
1.What is it?
2.What is the value?
3.How do I get it?
4.Has anyone else used it?
a.What do they say?
b.If not? What is the edge I get with it?
5.Yes, I want one!
With limited resources and limited time, investment needs to be on finding the market, bringing them to you, engaging the market, and closing some deals or selling product. The question to always ask:
Is what I am doing or spending money going to help me generate more sales?
Case in point, people always feel like they need to reinvent something that has been tested to work. (Ok…I respect out of the box thinking, but dollars can be wasted on IT projects that bring very little value in the end). E-Commerce is an area that people feel the need to “customize”. We had a client that need to change e-Commerce systems because the one they were using did not support standard marketing practices for e-Commerce sites. Yet, they would not do it because the one they were using had a feature that really brought no value to the buyer or their business. Again, was what they were doing going to help them generate more sales? The answer was no, yet they chose to spend $20,000 when $3,500 would have done the job for the next five years.
So, New Entrepreneurs, here are some things to keep in mind:
1.No one cares about “the idea.” They care about what the idea will do for them.
2.Investors don’t care about “the idea.” They care if their investment in the idea will make them money.
3.Investors don’t invest in “the idea”, they invest in the people behind the idea. If you do not demonstrate your ability to execute, you will not get investment.
4.Being President of nothing with no sales has no value.
5.It’s about marketing and sales, particularly for start-ups.
a.Always ask, is what I am doing going to help me sell more?
b.Is what I am spending my money on going to help me sell more?
c.Can I apply metrics to what I am doing?
6.It’s about execution.
Buying and selling is an emotional endeavor. No matter how logical we think we are, the ultimate decision to buy or do something touches an emotional nerve in the buyer.
I am attending a blogging conference and one of the presenters is making fantastic claims of 1st page Google positioning and high conversion rates. It is the greatest way to market yourself because it is inexpensive. (Though he prices his product by the number of blogs he has).
What was interesting was his ability to use persuasive language to get his audience emotionally bought into what he was saying, despite the facts of his argument. We like to think we are smarter than this, but the reality is, we are all suckers….
If we weren’t, Woot would not being doing so well. (I love Woot)
