Kantar Millward Brown has found that the more you try to say, the less likely your message is going to get across and stick.
A great reminder for all the times we are tempted to tell of all the great things our product does, of all the features our service has, of all the magic we can deliver.
When the temptation kicks in, just think how effective such a message would be if you were the customer. Would you understand it, appreciate it, remember it? Would it make you buy?
Keep it simple.
Not everyone is interested in what you have to sell. Not all those who are going to enter your shop will end up paying for something. Not all those who click on a banner are manifesting an interest in buying. Not all those who ask a question, or many questions, have their wallets open, waiting for the correct answer.
We all take actions without a reason, or at least without a clear enough reason, and so we should not punish those who stumble upon our pipeline or enter the funnel only to dream a bit bigger (or a bit smaller) for once.
Understanding your customers also means identifying those who are going to buy and those who are not. Too often we believe that the latter have just misunderstood, or have received not good enough service, or were misguided by the wrong button in the wrong banner in the wrong place.
It might be, sure, and yet it’s much more likely that they simply don’t want to buy.
And we should let them go.
Somehow we’ve all bought into the story that marketing is about tactics, hacks, posts, optimisation and measurement.
It’s an interesting story, one that somehow feeds both our need to stay ahead of the curve and our tendency to aimlessly complain when things don’t work.
The genius of Google and Facebook as platforms is that they are impossible to master. Can anybody name a company that has developed long term sustainable advantage from the mastery of Google and Facebook? … They have not become tools, they have become taxes that every one needs to pay.
Scott Galloway, PIVOT podcast ep. 188
It’s an interesting story, yet a story nonetheless.
The reality is very different: it’s made of mistakes in the very same metrics we have become accustomed to measure our marketing success by, it’s made of businesses that make money inflating those metrics with no top or bottom line benefit for the advertisers, it’s made of pointless efforts to optimise the unoptimisable while the platform owner brings the whole thing in a totally different direction.
What’s next for marketing is hopefully a reckoning that it’s not the platform, or the channel, or the single tactic, or the brand new hack that builds a meaningful, long-term connection. What’s next is hopefully a return to the lost fundamentals, and an increased awareness that there’s not a single way to reach that person that matters so much. Always start from them and you will win.
There are three dimensions to value.
The first one is about the product, the “how” dimension. At this level, you are talking about how your product can help, how different features can be used, the technical specs and everything that does depend 100% on your team. There’s a whole lot of companies that stop here: “our product is amazing, buy it!”; “we have the fastest solution for X, subscribe!”; “our patented Y is disrupting IT, take a free tour!”. And so on.
The second one is about the customer, the “what” dimension. Here, you are talking about what your product delivers that is valuable for the customer. In general, and I am paraphrasing the approach of Inflexion Point here, there are five kind of value a company recognizes: more revenue, less costs, saving time, avoiding risk, and meeting targets (e.g. brand awareness, reputation, customer satisfaction, etc.). A bunch of companies end up here, and so you have “our product is the easiest way to get your back-office processes under control” (time saving); “we are the leader in delivering outstanding customer experiences” (meeting targets); “if you want to forget about fines, you have to try our newest solution for compliance” (avoiding risk).
The third one is about the world, the “why” dimension. Not the world as a whole, the world that delimits the prospect, some would call it “market” (I believe it is a bit reductive). Of course, every company is happy with more revenue, less costs, saved time, avoided risks, and met targets. And yet this is about understanding why these things are important to the customer you are targeting, and which one is more important than the others. Perhaps your target customer has just experienced an increase in direct competition from new entrants: “Our product is an easy to use tool that gets you up to speed, allowing you to compete on a level field with X and Y”. Perhaps they have been subjected to increasing regulatory scrutiny: “We have worked with companies like yours, and they have struggled to keep up with ever changing rules. Here is what we have to offer..”. Perhaps their customers have been empowered by technology: “With our product, you can forget about manual tasks and wasted time, so that your employees can dedicate all the needed attention to your customers and their demands.”
Very few companies manage to get to the third dimension. It takes work and appreciation of what your customers are struggling with and why. Sometimes, that means actually getting to a level of understanding that can open new venues for your prospects. Things they had not thought about before meeting you and your product, new solutions to an old problem never tackled because thought secondary.
How do you get to the “why” dimension? Clearly, start with your customers.
You are at a party.
You have been nervous lately at the idea of coming to this party, so while you drive there you rehearse some situations in your mind. You prepare interesting stories, a couple of funny anecdotes, think about how to invite people to your own party next week, and mentally remind faces and names of the people you’ve heard are looking forward to meeting you.
As this happens in your mind, confidence builds and you enter the main room with your chin up high. You walk to the bar, and a guy standing there politely asks: “How are you?”. “Well, thanks. Actually, the most funny thing happened to me this afternoon..”, and you continue for about ten minutes telling your little story.
The nice guy disengages from you to rejoin his friends, and you notice the host a few steps away from you. You approach her and the group she is talking to, and you overhear her sharing that she’d had a problem with her car, and she’d had to walk back home for 10 kilometres, leaving the car on the side of the road. Fortunately, you know everything about cars, so what better chance? “As you describe it, it sounds like a problem with the carburator. I have a list of three things I do weekly to avoid problems with the carburator. First, …”, and you continue with your advises for a perfect carburator maintenance routine for the next five minutes. As the group slowly disperses.
Just after you’ve put something in your stomach (the food is not great, but at least you got to share with some bystanders the story of how you have overcome the challenges of combining work and study, and managed to graduate with distinction), you spot one of the people that you’ve heard wants to meet you. You rush to her with steady steps, and after a quick intro, you invite her to join the party you are giving at your place a week from now. “It’s to celebrate my recent promotion”, you explain, “I am inviting as many people as possible, so that together we can celebrate this unbelievable achievement of mine. Just think I have only been with the company for five months!”.
The party continues, and after the initial confidence, anxiety surfaces once more, as you have the feeling people are trying to avoid you. Why would that be? Did you perhaps choose the wrong stories to tell? Or the wrong words? Is your place too far away from the city center, and people will not join your party for that reason?
You are beaten, and you can’t make sense of what is going on.
Here is how most marketing feels today. Self-centered, obnoxious, bogus and irrelevant. Time for a change?
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