The Many P's of Marketing: Passion

As I was starting work on this series of blogs about the many P's of marketing, I reached out to marketers and communicators whom I respected to talk about the ideas and to invite some of them to write guest blogs for the series.  One of the people I reached out to, Melea Smith, asked me if I was writing about the traditional 4 P's of Marketing: Product, Price, Promotion and Place or the New 4 P's of Marketing: Passion, Purpose, Personality and Positioning.  "Both," I glibly lied to her.  And then I started writing about the new four P's.

Passion:  You don't have to be passionate about your product, service or company to market it, but it helps.  Just like you don't have to love the game of basketball to be a good player, it is almost impossible to be a superstar without a certain level of passion.  Passion is the difference between a good speaker and an evangelist; it is what makes a follower into an acolyte, a fan into a groupie, an advertisement reader into a customer.

A marketer who doesn't feel passionate about what he is marketing, can still develop and execute an effective marketing plan.  But it is passion for the product or service that is being marketed that helps the marketer keep the faith during the inevitable slow times.  It is passion that inspires a "we MUST win" attitude among the marketing team.  It is passion that helps him sell the concepts in the marketing plan in the first place.

Why is passion important?  While passion has many meanings, I think, when it comes to marketing, passion is about truly believing that your product CAN help customers; that it WILL address their needs as well or better than any other option.  Passion about your product is, in other words, belief in the quality of your product and its attributes.

That belief, that conviction, when it is the basis for the marketing plan, shows through and turbocharges the marketing effort.  As D. H. Lawrence said, "Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you've got to say, and say it hot."  Lawrence may have been talking about a different type of passion, but the quote is no less relevant when applied to marketing!

As with so many of the P's of Marketing, passion has at least two meanings that make it relevant to marketing.  In addition to being valuable if the marketer feels passionate about the product or service he is marketing, it is important that the marketing plan is designed to arouse the passions of the prospect.

All purchase decisions are made emotionally.  All of them.  Some decisions are later reinforced or backed up with facts, but emotions drive the initial decision. People make purchase decisions based on what will make them feel or look better, what will result in the least problems or the most recognition.  I remember when my parents bought a new house when I was a teenager.  They told us about the color of the drapes and the trees in the back yard but they couldn't remember how many rooms were in the house.

It stands to reason, then, that a marketer who can incite the passions of a prospect, has a much better chance of turning that prospect into a customer.  There have been a lot of studies about the different steps a prospect goes through before becoming a customer.  While there is some variation in the number of steps or the tags they assign to these steps, all of the studies have some step where the prospect makes an emotional connection to the product or service being considered.  In every process, there is a point where passions are aroused before the purchase decision is made.

Very successful marketers don't stop with the purchase decision.  Recognizing that if customers continue to feel passionate about their decision, at the least they will be effective word-of-mouth advertisers.  At the best they will continue to be customers.  Apple is a master of this.  They do an excellent job of keeping their customers passionate about the products they purchase.  Just try telling someone who uses a Mac about a cool new feature on your PC and you will experience what a second-class citizen feels like!

"Find your passion, whatever it may be. Become it, and let it become you and you will find great things happen FOR you, TO you and BECAUSE of you."               T. Alan Armstrong