Marketing has gotten more and more nuanced, as new technologies and strategies have opened up many options for marketers. It is my contention that today, the marketing mix contains much more than the traditional four or five P's that are taught in school. In this series I am exploring the Many P's of Marketing.
Parables: We are storytelling animals. The most successful communicators, whether they are spiritual or political leaders, teachers, business leaders or activists, know that there is nothing quite like a story or parable to drive home the point. Stories engage the listener or reader. Stories frame issues and make points in a way that is easier to relate to AND easier to remember.
There is a reason that one of the most famous and successful ads of all time is a very wordy print ad that starts with the headline "They all laughed when I sat down at the piano, but when I started to play!..." You don't have to have paragraphs and paragraphs of copy like John Caples famous ad, but if your marketing can engage prospects in a story you can engage them both intellectually AND emotionally. It also allows you to utilize all the tools of a storyteller to hook and draw in your audience. You can read the famous ad here.
In the area in which I live, there used to be a storytelling festival. It was a remarkable thing to see. Every year, for a long autumn weekend, a large grassy field would be filled with tents, large and small. You could go around from tent to tent listening to professional and amateur storytellers spinning yarns, cracking jokes and telling tall tales. Virtually every tent was filled with a cross section of society that were brought together by the special magic that only a great story holds! The remarkable thing is that it has been almost 10 years since I have been to that festival (it is no longer held) and I can still remember half a dozen of the stories I heard that weekend. I went to a conference about a month ago and have to check my notes to remind myself about the Power Point presentations I saw.
A parables or story stays with you because it engages your intellect and emotions. It connects with you verbally and, since it creates images in your mind, visually. Stories, when used well in marketing, often "sell" the product without seeming pushy or aggressive. Stories can also tickle your funny bone and give you a good general feeling about the company. I remember several years ago reading a full page ad in the newspaper announcing that Taco Bell, to help with the national debt, had just purchased the Liberty Bell. The company, the ad announced, was renaming the national historic icon the Taco Liberty Bell. A glance at the date that this ad ran, April 1, told me that this was a company that wasn't afraid to be a bit irreverent or to take some chances. The ad and the story it told generated HUGE additional media for Taco Bell. You can read that ad here. The point is that a story, even a made-up story, helps you cut through the media clutter and become memorable.
It is important to realize that storytelling does not always have to look like John Caples' ad, with paragraphs of copy and little else. A smart, creative marketer can tell a story with a photograph, a short video, a radio skit, creative packaging and so much more. Penzey's Spices and Lands' End often include stories about their customers in their catalogs. Sometimes these stories involve the use of the products, but that is not the primary focus. Instead, it gives the catalog reader an opportunity to relate to fellow customers. It also gets readers to spend more time with the catalog, which more often than not ends up in more money spent on products!
You need to strongly considering making parables and stories a part of your marketing tool box. If you don't, well, you're only telling half your story...
Showing posts with label passion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label passion. Show all posts
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Friday, January 25, 2013
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!
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
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