This, my friends, is wisdom straight out of the Old Marketing Play Book.  For many generations it was a fundamental truth that good marketing had to be memorable.  But now, that wisdom is almost entirely useless.

Memorability was important in an age when useful information was hard to come by.  It was a time when people actually made their spending decisions based on factors such as, “Hey, at least I recognize that one.” Or “That one’s ad looks like they spent the most on it.” Or “Damn it. I have to call SOMEONE and if their ad is on the side of a buss they can’t suck that much.”

Those days are gone.  Of course, memorability counts for something but by itself it counts for nothing.  No longer is it possible to succeed by grabbing attention and forcing your brand into millions of minds.  That kind of strategy will just make people acutely aware of how much they need to spend a couple of extra seconds to find your competition.

Whether deserved or not, Realtors often suffer from the perception that they are in the profession just to make a quick buck, that they have little actual expertise, and that even in the worst market they can be counted on to tell you, “Now is the perfect time to buy.”

So as the housing market shutters with uncertainty and teeters on the brink of collapse, what prudent advice does the nation’s largest body of real estate agents have for us?

“Now is the time to buy!” Says the NAR.

I love that one. Especially with the Commerce Department saying this could be the worst downturn we’ve seen in more than twenty years.

In short, rather than taking this opportunity to prove that Realtors can be a source for valuable information and insights, they chose to emphasize the self-serving nature of their trade.

Looks like they’re operating on the Dumb-Consumer Theory of Marketing. But being that almost nobody is THAT dumb, the NAR ad will simultaneously sway nobody while eroding what little credibility they had left.

The lesson in all of this? Credibility is not something you can fabricate out of nothing. It is something given by the consumer only after you’ve actually earned it.

My favorite example ever of such Claim Inflation is the tagline “Reveal the Goddess Within” for Venus leg-shaving razors. Gag me with a spoon. What. Is the razor so sharp that it’s going to scrape away your sins? (Here’s my blog post about it.)

The huge, HUGE problem with this approach is, 1) it’s annoying and 2) it doesn’t work. Hell, you could say that you are “the worlds best, ultimate streamlined orgasmic world-rocking life solution,” and it wouldn’t even cause a twitch on the credibility meter.

Why?

Because credibility cannot be asserted. It can only be proven.

How do you prove credibility? There are two ways. Credibility can be proven either by one’s own direct experience or through the experience of someone they trust.

Think about it. If some blogger you trust said simply, “they are really good,” that would cause a huge swing in the credibility meter. Right?

This is one of the reasons word-of-mouth is so incredibly powerful. It inherently comes with a higher credibility value than perhaps any other form of marketing communication.

In the consumer’s mind, credibility is one of the truly essential elements. No Credibility = No Sale. Therefore, if your marketing is not in some incremental way proving credibility, it is not worth doing.

The problem is, difference, in and of itself, counts for nothing.

“Yeah right,” you might be saying. “Nobody ever won the marketing game by being the same.”

How very true, but here’s where the thinking goes all screwey. Most people seem to think of it this way:

“Better things are different, therefore different things are better.”

As you can see, that’s just plain loopy.

It’s true that without differentiation you will die, but you’ll also die if you just differentiate willy-nilly without strategy and purpose.

Here’s the article: Loose Lips Win Elections
And here are some highlights:

“Public trust in all kinds of communication is eroding, with a notable exception: word of mouth. A Roper poll found the number of people who said they get good ideas and information from television ads declined from 1977 to 2003, while the number who said the same about word of mouth increased by 25 percentage points.”

“Whether by chance or design…citizen advocates created the explosive growth in support for Mike Huckabee and sustained John Edwards, even as both were vastly outspent by their opponents.“

And here’s my commentary:

By now it’s abundantly clear that word of mouth is displacing and replacing the old one-sided mass communication model. What’s most fascinating though, is why? Why word of mouth and why now?

As I see it, it all comes down to Relevance. Mass Communication is really good at simply putting a message in front of the masses. But it’s terrible at delivering relevant messages. On the other hand, people, real live people, are excellent at collecting and distributing relevant messages. And today, with email and all this Web 2.0 online social networking, relevant messages can spread farther and faster than any paid message. As the barriers to relevance crumble like the Berlin Wall, who is going to bother to give mass media a second thought?

For the 2008 presidential election, the relevance issue will doubtlessly be decisive. The candidates who spend their resources monologuing through paid media and PR events will render themselves as obsolete as the Yellow Pages. But the candidates who manages to engage in real dialog with real communities will find themselves thrust to the front.

Introducing the mutant love-child of Neuroscience and Marketing: Neuromarketing. (bet you didn’t see that coming).

Evidently the whole Creativity thing didn’t pan out as a way to undermine free will so it’s on to neurons we go. These pioneers believe they can find the secret levers that bypass your conscious mind to make you buy just by scanning your brain while you look at ads.

A brilliant yet dastardly plan indeed, and it would have worked if it wasn’t entirely detached from reality.

First of all, brains don’t work that way. There’s no “Buy” center in the brain. Granted, certain areas do light up when you like something, but those exact same centers light up when you see something new or interesting. And, let’s say you’re testing your latest cheap beer ad comprised of, as always, of beer bottles and beer babes. The subject’s “arousal” will have nothing to do with your lame beer and everything to do with their heterosexuality.

Anyways, technical idiocy aside, the biggest failure of Neuromarketing is its premise. Even if it did work it would be nothing more than an elaborate strategy to trick people into buying a product. And in a time when word of mouth about good products spreads like a California wildfire, your product would have to be shamefully inadequate to need it. So inadequate, in fact, that tricking people into trying it would ensure a quick death through negative word of mouth.

Thank you Robert Stevens (founder of Geek Squad) for summing it all up.

The quote can be found in this article in Business Week. The article is so fundamentally, profoundly dead-on, there’s little need to add my own commentary.

I will, however, offer some highlights:

“The best stories of well-marketed businesses and brands have come from companies that haven’t spent their money on conventional media but have adopted new approaches. Take for example the plucky crew at Blendtec and their wonderful Will It Blend? viral video series that has been viewed more than 70 million times.”

[ed: They blended an iPhone. And yes, it will blend… to smoking powder. But what really convinced me was when they blended a golf club… to smoking powder.]

“We’ve moved past the point where bragging rights belong to the creators of articulate analogies or metaphors for why one generic car drives better than another. Instead we’re beginning to see a greater focus on something that is not even a new idea—that the products and services businesses create should be fundamentally good.”

[ed: Yeeeeah!]

“If your product is not as good as the competition, or if it fails to live up to your claims, the world will soon know about it and no amount of cleverness will save you—nor should it.”

[ed: Oh SNAP.]

The Sock-Puppet Fallacy, named after the likable failure that was the Pets.com mascot, is the mistaken belief that the more people like your marketing materials (newsletters, ads, taglines, etc), the more they’ll want to give you money.

You see it everywhere. The effectiveness of ad campaigns is even measured in terms of how they rate in surveys of “Most Liked” ads. But I am here to tell you, unequivocally, that any such connection is purely an illusion.

“How can this be?” you might be asking. “People spend money on what they like. Duh!”

Ah, but here is where the fallacy comes in. To understand what’s going on it’s critical to differentiate between liking your marketing and liking your business. People spend money on businesses they like. But likable marketing is only good for getting people to pay attention. And with a 95 percent product failure rate, the marketing world is choked with likable marketing that does nothing for sales.

Ideally you would have both — likable marketing and a likable business. But to do that, your marketing has to actually give people a valid reason to like your business. If you don’t make it abundantly clear how YOU will meet their needs better than anybody else, they will simply enjoy your clever materials then spend their money on the business that seems like it will meet their needs.

Also, keep in mind that people are reflexively supportive. So when they tell you how much they love your newsletter (website, logo….), chances are they’re just searching for something nice to say.

Step 1 : Pay some talented folks to create your brand — you know, all those pretty words and pictures that “capture the essence” of your business.

Step 2: Beat that brand into the public mind by any means necessary.

In the olden days that strategy actually worked because… well because, what the hell else did the lowly consumer have to go by? Back then, useful information was so hard to come by, the Yellow Pages was actually valuable. But with the Information Superhighway being what it is, the Yellow Pages is nothing more than a tragic waste of colored paper.

These days, with just a few clicks the consumer can find much more than the glorified Yellow-Page ad that passes for many a business website, we can also find out what your customers are saying about you or at least what they’re saying about your competition.

No big news there, but consider how this throws a big hairy wrench in the old two-step marketing strategy.

Take for example, Seattle’s Beacon Plumbing.

Everyone in the region has seen their ads at least fifty times. They’ve doubtlessly achieved Old Marketing’s Holy Grail: Top of Mind Awareness. When Seattleites think plumbing, we think “Stop Freakn’… Call Beacon.”

Nice work, right? NO. Bad. BAD work, because when you do a Google search for “Beacon Plumbing” — to, say, find their phone number because you already recycled your Yellow Pages — you come up with a few of Beacon’s links then a link to a consumer review site in which about 90% of the reviews paint them as liars and crooks.

That’s rough. A lot of people who were about to call Beacon are now freakn’. Those nasty reviews are hard to miss and they’re a whole hell of a lot more credible than pretty ads. What would have been a success by Old-Marketing standards will almost assuredly do some serious, long-term damage.

So, what’s a modern business to do?

Embrace the change, my friends. Embrace the change! These days, image is (almost) nothing and substance is (almost) everything. Think about the plumber scenario. If some no-name plumber with the world’s ugliest website had fifty glowing user reviews, wouldn’t you go with that guy over Beacon? The good news is, substance is cheap. It just takes some extra thought and some actual caring. And today, more than ever, you will be rewarded for your effort.

Sure, they’re good at making sportswear, but when it comes to marketing they’ve always been far ahead of the curve.

Today’s New York Times has an excellent article, The New Advertising Outlet: Your Life, highlighting Nike’s new marketing strategy. It seems that the shoe giant has revised its entire approach to marketing to focus on marketing that consumers actually want, rather than marketing they can’t avoid.

According to the NYT, “Behind the shift is a fundamental change in Nike’s view of the role of advertising. No longer are ads primarily meant to grab a person’s attention while they’re trying to do something else — like reading an article. Nike executives say that much of the company’s future advertising spending will take the form of services for consumers, like workout advice, online communities and local sports competitions.”

In their effort to be more meaningful instead of being more loud they created useful online resources and in-person programs that people are actually thankful to be a part of.

Not surprisingly, it’s paying off quite handsomely for them.

In the past a mediocre product backed by a massive marketing budget could be quite successful. Today, even the most massive of marketing budgets can’t disguise mediocrity. But products and experiences that are truly useful will practically market themselves.

Here are some sure-fire ways to know if yours is one of the sucky ones:

• It’s filled with canned information from one of those newsletter services: Even if the articles are great, the reader isn’t going to assume that you even read them, let alone understood them.
• It’s purpose is “Just to remind people we’re there”: That’s just spam, people.
• You send out information that has nothing to do with your business: I’m sorry, but if you’re not in the food service industry, sending recipes is pointless. Same goes for Farmers Market calendars. If they wanted that they’d get it on the dang internet.
• You wrote it but all you do is talk about all the reasons people should hire you: That’s just a sales pitch, and PEOPLE HATE SALES PITCHES.

If any one of these applies to you, your newsletter truly SUCKS!

Here’s the comprehensive list of ways to make it not suck:

• Make it useful: Presumably you’re an expert in the thing you’re trying to promote, so prove it. Give your insights, advice, insider knowledge, tips, ideas, etc. Make the readers’ lives better through the gift of your expertise.

That’s it. Do that and you will suck no more.

Getting the worst of it is Print Media. Just last year Merrill Lynch referred to the outlook for newspapers as “deeply depressing.” And in an effort that wreaks of desperation, the Newspaper Association of America came out with a $50 million campaign with the rallying cry of, “Newspaper advertising: A destination not a distraction.” Yikes!

So why are these giants of cultural power suddenly gasping for air? The easy answer is, “It’s the Internet, stupid.” Yup, you got that right. But what’s really interesting here is that the internet has done more than just give us websites. It’s actually fundamentally changed how we as a society communicate.

All of us now have a practically infinite ability to access and share information. And in that kind of situation it hardly matters if you’re backed by a massive media empire — if you’re message isn’t relevant, it ain’t going nowhere. And that’s why a blogger working from home in his undies or an inarticulate ranting teen on YouTube can create content that kicks the asses of the mass media.

“Boy, it would suck to be in their shoes right now, right?”

Ahem. If you’re like 90% of businesses out there, you ARE in their shoes! If you haven’t figured out how to be relevant and you still believe that you “just gotta get your name out there,” then the outlook for your business just might be among the most deeply depressing of all.

This whole thing really pisses me off, but not for the reason you might think.

Evidently there was some scientific study looking at how branding influences kids’ perception of tastiness. And what do you suppose they found? They found that even carrots, milk and apple juice tasted better to the children when they came in a McDonalds wrapper.

According to Dr. Tom Robinson of Stanford University, author of the study, the children’s perception of taste was “physically altered by the branding.”

Egads! Advertisers controlling our children like marionettes, manipulating their very biochemistry for their own selfish gain!

Problem is, the study was absolute BULLSHIT. All they did was give some kids two trays of food - one with McDonalds food in the appropriate packaging and the other wrapped in plain paper. And the kids, of course preferred the pretty one.

WHAT THE HELL DID YOU EXPECT?
This study proves nothing more than the centuries-old fact that presentation is important. So f’ing what?

Bad research is nothing new, especially when it comes to marketing, but what really got my blood boiling was the journalistic response. Throwing basic critical faculties aside they practically tripped over themselves to sound the alarm about the mystical powers of Madison Avenue.

In our society we have this ridiculous mythology about the power of advertising. Everyone from advertisers to journalists to scientists to ordinary citizens seems to want it to be true. But it’s not.

As I’ve mentioned before, advertisers avoid measurement like the plague. And for good reason. because the closer you look the more you realize how truly impotent they are.

In the nearly 100 years since he first said those words, the quote has taken on a life of its own. In fact, it just might be the most repeated line in all of marketing.

Up until recently, a marketer could use that “which half” bit of sleight of hand to justify spending ridiculous amounts of a client’s money. But these days, with everything being so damn measurable, marketers are increasingly put in the uncomfortable position of having to show actual results.

In my last post I talked about how Chief Marketing Officers are having a hard time even justifying their own employment.

Then comes this doozey of a headline:
CMOs Rapped for Having Zero Impact on Sales

Evidently they did a big ol’ academic study and found that the Emperor just might have no clothes.

Then, in the same publication, on the very same day, Pontiac’s former CMO is gushingly regaled for being a “maverick” and an “innovator” who won “slews of awards.” And without any apparent sense of irony they casually mention that the car maker’s sales were down 14%! Wait a sec. Was he hired to be a maverick, or to increase sales?

So why am I telling you all of this?

I’m telling you this because as an independent business, you probably learned most of your marketing tricks by watching the big, successful companies. Very sensibly, you might have presumed that huge and expensive marketing departments headed by big-name gurus would actually know what they’re doing.

Turns out, though, the big boys really don’t know what they’re doing. No doubt some of it is working, but they don’t know how, when or why. And to make matters worse, it’s looking like the really big, flashy and expensive stuff is actually the least effective.

So, next time you see some whiz-bang marketing ploy that you really, really want to try; take a moment of silence for that highly-compensated marketing guy who’s probably going to get fired for wasting all that money.

So what is this great insurmountable challenge?

Measurement.

Outside of the marketing industry it is a little known fact that most marketing has, historically, been unmeasurable. Pretty odd considering that hundreds of billions are spent on it every year. These days, though, thanks to the internet, marketing is highly measurable, and do you know what they’re finding? They’re finding that their marketing strategies don’t actually work.

A headline in yesterday’s Advertising Age summed it up nicely:

Blame CMO Turnover on Metrics Mania
The article points out that the average tenure of a CMO is now only about 26 months and goes on to say:
“The current demand for greater metrics, more measurement and increased accountability on the part of CMOs has resulted in demoralized marketing departments and muddled messaging.”

Ah, Accountability, the bane of the advertiser.

So what’s a CMO to do? Well, whine, of course. Rather than question the validity of their hobbling and wheezing strategy, marketers are sounding the alarm that all this data could mean the death of “creative,” “audacious,” and “original” campaigns.

To that I would say — What the hell makes you think that being original and audacious does a damn bit of good anyways? Are we supposed to believe that your creativity has some kind of magical and unmeasurable power?

If it works, it’s measurable. Right? So maybe, just maybe, it’s time to move on. Embrace the fact that the old ways no longer work and start using your creativity to find a way that does.

“Consumers are…taking bloggers’ word before they buy. A late 2006 Ipsos MORI survey found that blogs were a more trusted source of information than advertising or e-mail marketing. One-third of respondents said they had decided not to buy a product after reading a negative blog post, while 52% were persuaded to buy after reading a positive review.” (Who Blogs? Advertising Age, June 04, 2007)

Why is that?

It’s because a well-done blog is more relevant and more credible than just about anything else. As consumers we are starved for relevance and credibility. We constantly search for it but rarely find it.

As a business owner, then, if you want to stand out amidst the cacophony of bad marketing, then by God, stop trying to be louder and start trying to be more meaningful. Stop trying to “get your name out there” and get yourself a blog so you can get your expertise out there.

You know that chicken suit you’ve always wanted to wear, well you go put it on and grab a piece of cardboard and scribble out your business name and phone number and rush right out to the nearest strip mall, and you DANCE, dance with wild abandon. Get some flashing lights while you’re at it. It don’t matter if you’re a lawyer, a writer or an internet startup because that sh*t is gonna work!

I should point out though, that just because it works doesn’t mean it’s worth doing.

As with all marketing, you get exactly who you target, and though you may not know it, your Chicken-Suit Strategy IS targeting someone. But who? Who would be attracted to you just because you stole a moment of their attention? Especially these days when it takes just a few minutes to find relevant and credible information on just about anything we could imagine spending money on.

As I see it, Chicken-Suiting is highly effective at targeting the lazy and the desperate. And it’s also great at filtering out all the rest.

So if you love working with the lazy and/or desperate, then by all means, grab attention by any means necessary. Send out mail pieces just to remind people you’re there. Email them canned newsletters. Put your face on shopping carts. Think outside the box — spray paint your URL on the sidewalk.

You may end up spending far more (renting costumes or paying legal fees) than you’d ever get from your clients, but by-golly those lazy-desperate clients will stumble to you like zombies to brains (Thanks goes to copywriter Chris Haddad for the witty line.

So why does chicken-suiting appeal to the lazy-desperate? Because, due to their disposition, you are relevant. You are right there. Their search is over.

The fundamental principle here is this: Relevance attracts.

So if the lazy-desperate types are not your cup of tea, you might want to consider developing ways to be relevant to the kind of clients you do want. Start by defining the kind of people you want, then ask yourself what they would want from someone like you. Next, put it all together to give them the relevance they crave. The more relevant you become, the more they will want to hear from you, and the more they will spread the word about you.

Thanks for the question, Seth.

To understand hubs, think of it this way – a hub is anything that could spread effective word-of-mouth about your business. Now, the “effective” part is critical. It’s not enough to have just anybody talking about you. The target market has to actually trust their opinion on the subject. So, what you’re looking for could be anything, from a single individual to a blog to a community newsletter to the New York Times.

For example, one of my Realtor clients is targeting young professionals, so for a specific promotion we narrowed it down like this: Young Professionals > New Professionals (recent grads) > Engineers > New Boeing Engineers. So, the hub to get to them could be the HR manager or a friend who works at the company. We’d then make contact with that person to get their input on what the most valuable presentation would be and get them to send out a simple email to the new engineers inviting them to the event.

I hope that helps.

The Answer Lines are open so if y’all have a question, just send it to me in an email.

It’s a great question and one that many businesses, small and large, struggle with.

With taglines a common mistake is to believe they can somehow build your credibility. But credibility is something that can only be proven. No matter how witty or bold your tagline is, nobody’s going to believe it.

My favorite of late is the one for the Venus leg-shaving razors – “Reveal the goddess within.” Wow. A razor that makes you more god-like? It’s a bold claim cleverly expressed. And still it does nothing. I doubt anybody old enough to have leg hair would think that it’s anything more than a (possibly) pretty good razor.

Though a tagline can do nothing for your credibility, it can show relevance. A good tagline tells people exactly why they should continue paying attention to you. And a REALLY good tagline does so with creativity and flair.

As if their ad wasn’t embarrassing enough, their offer is insulting to anyone with a normally functioning brain. Sure, $24.95 is a good deal, but the cost of broadband goes DOWN every year. Oh, but according to the ad’s wretched song, “in the year 2525, it’s still $24.95.” Yeah. You better lock in those rates now to pass down to your great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren.

And speaking of the Dumb-Consumer Theory of marketing, have you seen Washington Mutual’s latest brainchild? “Free Checks for Life!” Well, Boy-Howdy! Better get in on that before checks become entirely obsolete.

Examples of the Dumb-Consumer Theory are everywhere, not just in the occasional blisteringly bad offer. You see it in most forms of Exposure Marketing. The belief seems to be that if you just get your ad in front of people again and again, or “just get your name out there” then the dumb consumer will eventually feel compelled to give you money.

The one fatal flaw with this strategy, though, is that the consumer is not dumb. The consumer is actually quite savvy, especially these days when companies can no longer disguise their lameness. If you treat people like they’re idiots, you’ll just end up looking like an idiot. And rather than earning money, you’ll earn some well-deserved mockery.

Today, Marketing’s Golden Rule is this: Market unto others as you would have them market unto you. I know. It’s bold and daring, if not revolutionary. But the funny thing about it is, it actually works.

It’s not that wearing such suits is an inherently bad idea. Take Seattle’s Waxon Spa for example. To promote bikini waxing they’ve been known to use a guy dressed in a beaver suit. It gets attention, builds thier brand persona and it gets you thinking of the fine work they do. Nice job, Annie.

A true Chicken-Suit Strategy is based on the idea that any attention is good attention, and to get that attention you have to grab it by any means necessary. And to use the strategy you don’t have to literally don a chicken suit. There are many forms of metaphorical chicken suits such as flashing lights, loud voice-overs, bold and unsubstiated claims or any silly, slacious or controversial gimick.

It’s what Crispin-Porter used in their dog feces ad for Haggar, and arguably what they used in thier creepy and deispised resurection of Orvile Reddenbacher. The world hated the ad for a number of reasons, but for me it was the revolting mental juxtoposition of embalmed flesh and popcorn.

By Chicken-Suit standards, though, I must commend C+P. The revulsion/annoyance/WTF? response is exactly what they were aiming for. Hell, they will even count this very blog post as a sign of success. Indeed, though they may be Masters of Awareness, they might well be relevant to none.

The strategy is about as easy as it is effective. It is true that Chicken-Suiting gets attention — as does a bratty kid — but any fool can get attention. And any fool with a big budget can tailor for your company a world-class chicken suit. Look at Career Builder’s Age-o-Matic. With possibly the least inspired name imagineable Career Builder is doubtlessly drawing many thousands of eyeballs to its age-progression e-gizmo. But I ask you, dear reader, is there anything about seeing yourself with grey hair and liver spots that would motivate you to use Career Builder over others such as Monster or Craigslist?

If you’re wearing a chicken suit, then for the love of humanity and the health of your business, get rid of it. It doesn’t work. Burn it and never look back. There is a better way.

Marketing is at its least effective when it’s based on taking — attention, time, etc. And at its most powerful when it’s based on giving. If you give your target market something they WANT to be a part of and want to talk about, they will.

Sadly, there is no such thing as targeting everybody because “targeting everybody” is just a euphemism for targeting nobody. And when you target nobody, that’s exactly what you’ll tend to get. Sure, you’ll get some clients, but only those who can’t conveniently find someone who actually meets their needs — a tenuous USP (Unique Selling Proposition), indeed.

The next great targeting mistake is what I call Deductive Targeting. Deductive Targeting is another form of Nobody-Targeting but with this one you eliminate the least appealing groups. Starting with the obvious ones, the criminally insane for example, you eliminate group after group until you have a target such as “35- to 55-year-olds living in Seattle with an income over $100,000.”

From a strategic perspective, Deductive Targeting sucks. It sucks because in such groups there are no shared needs, no shared relevance. So rather than being just mildly irrelevant to a large group, you’re being aggressively irrelevant to a small group.

If you’re using these targeting strategies, you should be scared. In all liklihood you’ll end up exhausted, confused and broke.

To avoid that unpleasantness, you gotta reverse the whole process.  Start by looking at exactly the kind of person you’d love to work with — hippies, history buffs, high-level professionals, etc, etc — then set to work figuring out what it would take to get them to fall in love with your business.  It’s really not that hard, you just gotta start from the right place.

Q. Where did the stages come from?

A. I made them up. They’re the product of probably thousands of hours of intensive mental labor, tons of real-world practical experience and a relentless drive to simplify and demystify the power of marketing.

Q. Let’s say I do the Four Stages, what will I have at the end?

A. You’ll have a damn good word-of-mouth marketing strategy. The first stage is designed to develop your target market in a very specifc way that opens up your word-of-mouth potential. An amazing thing happens when your targeting is done right. I’ve seen it happen hundreds of times - the flash of insight followed by a stream of marketing ideas.

The next three stages are devoted to developing the best of the best strategies, testing them on the target market and solidifying them into a simple and focused plan.

Q. Jeez. That seems like a lot of work. Can I do just a part of the Four Stages?

A. NO. This may sound authoritarian, but frankly, I know what works. And I know that not only are all of the stages essential, you actually have to do them in order. Besides, when you get right down to it, it’s actually not much work at all. Almost everybody completes the stages in four sessions with a few hours of homework between sessions.

Also, it is possible to develop a quick and dirty promotion. But even if we put it together in one session, we’d still take the same four steps to get there.

Q. This ‘targeting’ stuff sounds interesting, but it’s also kind of scarry.

A. Just about every single one of my clients has struggled with the fear of targeting. The important thing to keep in mind though, is that you do not have to devote your entire business to the target, just an entire strategy. It’s best to focus your efforts on a single target market, but you can also test the waters with different ones. Each target, however, MUST have it’s own strategy.

Q. What does a word-of-mouth strategy look like?

A. They’re usually extraordinarily precise and extraordinarily simple. Our goal is to identify exactly the kind of person you want for a client, what it would take to get them all excited about you, how to get them to want to pay attention to you and how to make it easy and enjoyable for them to build a relationship with you.

And the cost to implement one of these strategies? Extraordinarily inexpensive… and sometimes free.

Q. After the Stages, then what?

A. Oh the possibilities! I want to see every one of my clients get rich off of the strategies I develop. Some can just take the plan and run with it and I certainly applaud them for it. Others need varrying degrees of support, from occational consultions to full project management. In every case, though, we make the suppport plan only after the Stages.

And that’s the Four Stages in a nutshell. I hope that helps!

The article, Real estate agents take dramatic turn for sales, talks about how local real estate agents, in competition with over 13,000 other agents, are turning to niche marketing in their search for an edge. You know me, I’m an impassioned evangelist for niche marketing, but in my overly-opinionated opinion, some of their strategies need help.

Don’t get me wrong, I applaud every single one of the agents in the article. Few people have the courage it takes to break away from the pack and charge off into uncharted territory. But they do and that deserves some serious respect.

These days, niche marketing can be incredibly powerful. But for it to be effective you have to do more than just “stand out” because although standing out will attract attention, it does very little to get clients. I mean, when it comes to seeking expert assistance for your most important investment, why would anybody let themselves be swayed by a gimmicky persona or a name on a house-shaped letter opener? Especially when you can spend half an hour on the internet and find the agent who is right for you.

Niche marketing is about more than attracting attention. It’s about taking control of your business, attracting the kind of people you want to work with and doing the kind of work you want to do.

That may sound all pie-in-the-sky, but it’s actually pretty straightforward. The only really challenging part is in the selection of the niche. You have to do it just right, but when you do everything else falls into place.

As I see it, there are three essential elements of a powerful niche:

1. They have shared needs that you can meet through your business
2. They have hubs of communication (websites, other professionals or individuals, magazines, etc)
3. There’s enough of them to make your business thrive.

Take Phoenix for example. He’s a real estate agent specializing in dog owners. As it turns out, dog owners have a world of unique needs when it comes to buying and selling. He can become an expert on those needs and put together some services, informational materials or write some articles. He can also cross-promote with businesses who already have relationships with his target market. And he can offer potential clients something truly valuable that no other agent can.

Finding your niche is absolutely the most important thing you can do for your business. And when you do it by those three simple criteria, you’ll find that your marketing becomes more focused, less wasteful, magnitudes more effective and a hell of a lot more fun.

If you do it right, here’s what a blog will do for you:

• PROVE crediblity
• Show relevance
• Open a vast world of (free) promotion opportunities
• Creat a reason to pay attention to you in the first place
• Sustain attention
• Attract the clients you WOULD like and put off the clients you wouldn’t
• AND as if all that wasn’t good enough, it dramatically improves your Google Rank

The key here is, “if you do it right.” Most business blogs are pretty terrible. Rather than building a meaningful connection with past/current/future clients, they end up making the business owner look aimless and out of touch with the clients’ needs.

BUT when done right, a business blog can play a critical strategic role. As I see it, blogs give future clients an intermediate step between first exposure and actually meeting you or trying your product. And, it’s far better than a static website because it can actually demonstrate your expertise.

So, how do you do it right?

You target, identify the core themes your target market wants to hear about, find your voice, set it up and let it rip.

Easier said than done, I know. That’s why I partnered with Blogging Coach, Rachel Whalley to offer a class:

Rock Out with Your Blog Out: Why to Blog for Your Business and How to Do It
This class could be one of the most important things you do for your business, so get on it!

So, what’s going on here? As I see it, this is part of the massive changes ripping through the marketing world.

• The impact of consumer control: Those 1.7 million “exposures” happened on the consumers’ terms, not becasue they couldn’t avoid them.
• The power of relevance: The message spread ONLY because it was meaningful/interesting/entertaining, in other words, because it was relevant.
• The speed and force of word-of-mouth: The message spread person-to-person on a scale never possible before
• The declining importance of the mass media: “Not a penny spent on paid media”! How about that! Mass media lives and dies based on ad revenue. But if it’s possible to get better results without advertising, then they might be kind of screwed. We’ll see.

In case you didn’t get the memo, the rules have now officially changed. And to put a finer point on that — the old rules don’t work. And if some of them do, chances are they work differently now and for different reasons.

Not convinced? You might want to take a look at the conference that marketing’s heavy-hitters will be attending this November: Chaos: New Agendas in Advertising

Here’s a line from the event description: “The fundamental concepts of creative dominance and media planning has been redefined with advent of consumer content and targeted delivery. Clearly, what once was radical is now commonplace.”

Also, have a look at this interview with Al Ries, one of the world’s most respected marketing strategists.  In it he talks about his book The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR.   My favorite example: “In eight years, General Motors [the nation’s largest corporate advertiser] spent $23 billion on advertising. What did they get for their money? They lost six percent of market share, that’s what they got.”  Why might that be?  Because,  as he points out, advertising has little to no credibility.

Amen, Brother Ries.

But you didn’t need a famous marketing strategiest to tell you that.  All of us, from the days of our youth, learned that trusting advertisers just leads to disappointment. And by “all of us,” I mean all of us,  including advertisers.  They are well aware that they have crediblity problems, but that doesn’t make for a good client pitch, so what do they do? As Mr. Ries points out, “advertising agencies…generally ignore the credibility issue and focus on creativity.”

Ok, let me get this straight.  So in those moments when we feel warm and fuzzy about the stay-at-home mom having an acid flashback about talking dough or we pause wonder why iguanas might like cheap beer, the sheer force of the advertiser’s creative genius is actually undermining our wills and compelling us to buy even though, EVEN THOUGH, we do not trust them and we’d rather not be paying attention to them at all.  That’s Comcastic!

Now here’s an idea to help them with their credibility issue!  All the ad agencies should band together to create thier own ad campaign.  You could have cute little marmosets — with glasses — bantering about how “ads are your credibility solution.”
But ad agencies NEVER advertise.  Huh. I wonder why.

Everyone else is just looking for a reason to ignore you.

Don’t get me wrong. Everybody WANTS you to be as great as your mother thinks you are. Not becasue they necessarily care about you, but because they all want something they can be excited about.

So, if you want clients, stop talking to your mom and start talking to your clients. Give them a reason to pay attention to you in the first place. And make it excessively easy for them to convince themselves to start giving you money.

Here’s how you do it:

• Know your selling points. If you don’t have any beyond unsubstantiated claims, then you’ve got bigger problems.
• Get rid of the fluff: Fluff diffuses the impact of your message. Any content that’s not strengthening your marketing message is weakening it and should be eliminated.
• Prove your credibility: If you’re an expert in something, then show it. Write an FAQ, a Top-Ten, a How-To, a blog post — anything to show that you actually know what you’re talking about.
• Give them an easy next step: If you do the first steps right, they’ll want to hear more, but they’ll still be tempted to ignore you.  Make it worth their while to keep paying attention — useful blog posts or a newsletter, a no-pressure event, a free trial, etc.

Do this and not only will your mom be praising you, so will your clients.

That’s right - if this is your first year as an independent professional, you just might be able to attend Marketing University FREE! To throw your name in the hat, just send me an email to let me know. The name of the lucky newbie will be selected at random and announced on October 10th.

The goal: take 9 indie professionals and turn them from confused and out-of-date marketers to lean mean Word-of-Mouth MACHINES… in just 30 days.

Who is it for? The Intensive is for anyone running a business — massage therapists, real estate agents, tech startups, etc. Every business, no matter how ordinary, has the potential to generate word-of-mouth.

The Intensive will consist of four two-hour sessions over the course of a month. To maximize your progress, you will be given an assignment before the first session and after each subsequent session.

Here’s the Syllabus:

Phase I: The Niche

October 17

Overview:

• Good marketing/Bad Marketing
• What works and what doesn’t
• Why you must target

The Niche: Characteristics of a good target market

• Existing communications network
• Nodes and supernodes
• Competition

Who is YOUR ideal, wildest-dream target market?

Assignment: Describe your dream-target markets.
Assignment: Is there effective competition for this niche?

Phase II: The Product

October 24

• Characteristics of a word-of-mouth-worthy product/service.
• What do people actually want?
• What actually motivates people?
• What makes something remarkable?
• On its own
• Relative to the competition

What would make your product remarkable to the target market?

• Branding
• Delivery
• Services
• Cross-promotion
• Strategic Alliances

Assignment: Describe the product that would WOW your target market
Assignment: Talk to your targets to see if it would actually WOW them

Phase III: The Path

October 31

Characteristics of a strong path

• Levels of involvement
• Balanced incentives
• Who are your primary targets? (Supernodes)
• How would they want to hear about you?
• How would they want to talk about you?
• What are the steps your targets would want to take?
• What changes do you need to make to your existing marketing?
• What strategic elements do you need add to make the path smoother and more enticing?

Assignment: Create a map/storyline of the path from stranger to client.

Phase IV: Synthesis

November 7

This is where we put it all together, work out the kinks, sand it down, polish it up and send you away with a game-plan.

We’ll cover:

• Finalizing the plan
• The who, what, why and when of hiring professionals
• Timelines
• Goal setting
• Evaluating progress
• Strategic adjustments

The event location is TBD but but I can tell you it will be decided soon and it will be on Capitol Hill.

You can sign up for Marketing University through Biznik. Yes, you do have to be a Biznik member, but membership is free, it takes about two minutes and it’s must for all independent professionals.

But do they have “Relevance”?

If you’re like 90% of the population (the other 10% are real estate agents) you’d think these ads are all about encouraging you to hire a real estate agent. Oh, but you would be WRONG WRONG WRONG! They’re actually encouraging you to hire a genuine REALTOR®. What’s the difference? REALTORS® are a special breed of real estate agent, with thier own fees and a code of conduct. (and a secret handshake?)

So what’s this ad campaign all about? It’s about repositioning the REALTOR® in contrast to the ordinary real estate agent. The implication being that if you want reliablility and results, don’t go to an ordinary agent.

Will it work? Well, it depends on who they’re talking to. For those who care about the balkanization of the real estate world, this campaign will probably help deepen the divide. But the only people who care about that are already real estate agents. For the rest of us, the home-buying public, it’s irrelevant.

That’s not to say that there isn’t some profound differences between the two camps. REALTORS® mght be superior. And if they actually articulated the difference, we all might be chanting, “REALTORS® Uber Alles.” But they didn’t. Instead they presumed we all already cared about them and thier world.

What went wrong? They were seduced by the allure of Self-Referential Marketing. Rather than talking to their target markets, they’re talking about themselves to themselves.

“Silly REALTORS®,” you might say. But don’t be too quick to judge. Self-Referential Marketing is epidemic. And chances are you’re doing it too.

It’s an easy trap to fall into, especially if you’re working with a vague target. In other words, if you don’t know who you’re talking to, you’ll end up talking to yourself. And your potential clients will be more than happy to let you do it.

The goal: take 12 indie professionals and turn them from confused and out-of-date marketers to lean mean Word-of-Mouth MACHINES… in just 30 days.

The Intensive will consist of four two-hour sessions over the course of a month. To maximize your progress, you will be given an assignment before the first session and after each subsequent session.

Here’s the Syllabus:

Phase I: The Niche

September 13th
Overview:

• Good marketing/Bad Marketing
• What works and what doesn’t
• Why you must target

The Niche: Characteristics of a good target market

• Existing communications network
• Nodes and supernodes
• Competition

Who is YOUR ideal, wildest-dream target market?

Assignment: Write a list of five dream-target markets.
Assignment: Is there effective competition for this niche?

Phase II: The Product

September 20th

• Characteristics of a word-of-mouth-worthy product/service.
• What do people actually want?
• What actually motivates people?
• What makes something remarkable?
• On its own
• Relative to the competition

What would make your product remarkable to the target market?

• Branding
• Delivery
• Services
• Cross-promotion
• Strategic Alliances

Assignment: Design the product
Assignment: Talk to your targets

Phase III: The Path

September 27th

Characteristics of a strong path

• Levels of involvement
• Balanced incentives

• Who are your primary targets? (Supernodes)
• How would they want to hear about you?
• How would they want to talk about you?
• What are the necessary steps they would have to take?
• What changes do you need to make to your existing marketing?
• What strategic elements do you need add to make the path smoother and more enticing?

Assignment: Create a map/storyline of the path from stranger to client.

Phase IV: Synthesis

October 4

This is where we put it all together, work out the kinks, sand it down, polish it up and send you away with a game-plan.

We’ll cover:

• Finalizing the plan
• The who, what, why and when of hiring professionals
• Timelines
• Goal setting
• Evaluating progress
• Strategic adjustments

NOTE: If this event fills up and you can’t get into the first one, send me an email and I’ll put you on a wait list. The location is currently TBD, but it will be on Capitol Hill.

You can sign up through Biznik. You’ll find it on the Events page under Marketing University: Intensive. Yes, you do have to be a member, but membership is free and it’s must for all indie professionals.

• Don’t Just Get Bigger, Get Unique
• Why Compete? Create New Markets
• Obsess about Customers, Not Rivals

The big message is this: You choose your competitors. And you can choose to have none at all.

Unless you’re incredibly perceptive or a wonk obsessed with understanding the fundamental nature of marketing, you may not be aware of the profound changes going on in the world of marketing.

The change began with the advent of the internet but it really solidified after the DotCom Crash. With the Crash came a new incarnation of the internet. Rather than reflecting what marketers wanted it to be, it came to reflect what people wanted it to be.

The implications for marketing are profound. Today we’re seeing an exponential increase in the consumers’ ability to acquire and share relevant information on anything and everything a person could want. AND we’re seeing a similar increase in a company’s ability to be promoted through those channels.

So, what’s that mean? It means the balance of power has shifted from the company to the consumer. And the balance continues to tip.

So, what’s THAT mean? That means that the market’s selective pressures have changed. Whereas it was Survival of the Loudest. Now it is Survival of the Relevant. Marketing strategies designed to grab attention are failing to get results. But marketing strategies designed to offer a reason to be given attention are becoming phenominally successful. (For more on this, read Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing.)

Cripes! Get to the point! OK. THAT means that if you are better, you WILL be rewarded. And conversely, if you’re worse there is nowhere to hide.

Today, the only relevant marketing question is, “How can I be better, if not the best.” And I’m not talking about just making your core offering better. You have to make the entire experience better. Make it more convenient, more meaningful, more interesting, more fun, easier to talk about, more streamlined, simpler, more endearing, whatever.

And now I’d like to belabor a point. The only way to know how to make it better is to know who you are making it better for. And this, kindly colleagues, is why you must have a target market. (Demographic targeting - BAD. Lifestyle targeting - GOOD)

In case I was too vague with the subtext, I’d like to point out that this is AWESOME. With consumers increasingly in control of promotion, smaller businesses have an unprecidented ability to establish themselves and quickly grow.  In the new marketing landscape you can’t just relentlessly tell people you’re better.  Instead, be better and you will find the growth you seek.

On one side we have the creativity-driven 3:21 Wake-Up Call campaign.

On the other side we have the concrete benefits-driven “Tully’s has Free Wi-Fi.”

The Wake-Up Call campaign was an attempt to position Tully’s as the solution to the slump people tend to feel shortly after 3:00. Very clever. Very creative. And, it was a great campaign and well-executed to boot. The press loved it, the people loved it. Love all around.But what I wonder is, how much did it actually do for Tully’s? Undoubtedly it did wonders to raise awareness of the the Slump. I would bet it even increased coffee consumption overall. However, the cognative link to Tully’s itself would seem to be pretty weak.

Now, compare this to “Tully’s has Free Wi-Fi.” No concept. No fancy graphics. No witty tagline. And, well, no creativity. But it’s DAMN POWERFUL! And DAMN EFFECTIVE! First of all, consider the cost. All they need is a $50 wi-fi router and a highspeed connection. To promote it, all they need to do is throw up a few billboards.

And the effect? Instant word of mouth. Suddenly Tully’s is the obvious choice for a huge segment of the white-colar world. And where’s the main competitor, Starbucks? Still annoying and bewildering their target market by charging for what almost everyone else gives away for free.

I ask you, gentle reader, which campaign would influence you more?

There is one absolutely positive, 100%, every-single-time indicator that your marketing strategy (barring some phenomenal piece of luck) is DOA. And that one absolutely conclusive indicator is…. wait for it….. wait… the Magic Step.

A good marketing strategy creates an appealing path between you and your potential clients. A bad marketing strategy leaves gaps and obstacles in that path that the potential client will, somehow, for some reason, willingly traverse.

A perfect example of the Magic Step is the ubiquitous Myth of Seven Impressions — the belief that if you “just get your name out there” about seven times then clients will start knocking on your door.

Let’s take a closer look. For that strategy to make sense there would have to be something almost coercive about being exposed to a person, product or ad. A dubious claim indeed! I’d say that awareness alone generates no behavioral change (the only exception being in a case where you have no competition) (for more on this see “Awareness” doesn’t count for much)

The Seven Impressions strategy will fail because it’s not based the true nature of behavioral change (and behavioral change is, after all, what you’re looking for). The fact is, people change because they WANT to. So, what makes people want to change? I’ll tell ya. It’s Relevance, Credibility and Value.

A Magic Step, then, can be defined as a step that does not clearly establish enough Relevance, Credibility and Value to motivate a person to take the next necessary step.

And there you have it. If your marketing isn’t working I can pretty much guarantee there is a Magic Step there somewhere.

1. Do Something Better

2. Believe in What You Do

3. Community is Everything

4. Be Soulful

5. Be Authentic

Why it’s important

Flickr and YouTube are phenomenally successful and they got that way by breaking all the rules. Instead of telling us how badly we needed their product, they actually listened to consumers and gave them something they wanted. In other words, the dialog has reversed. If you’re not sincerely listening to the customer, they’re not going to listen to you.

I love this site and your blog articles. I agree with all you have to say about word-of-mouth marketing, but I am completely stumped at how to start the WOM ball rolling.

I’m a sole proprietorship and the service I offer is writing coaching, so I think I really have to get in front of people to get them to see the value of my service. Blanket advertising has little effect, as does pestering my friends and family network for referrals.

How does a one-person business, whose product is essentially a combination of personality and know-how, get in front of its target market?

Dear Rachel,

Thanks for the great question.

Everything about WOM starts with the target market. Go ahead and pick one you’re passionate about. You’ll find that the more narrowly you target, the more opportunities emerge. Let’s say you think you’d like to work with attorneys (god knows they need the help). That’s a big group so you might want to narrow your focus to something like attorneys specializing in environmental law.

Within this group there will be nodes of influence. A node can be a person, organization, a trusted information source, etc. Your goal, then, is to figure out which nodes you want and what it would take to get them to want to talk about you (for tips on that, see the post on Relevance, Credibility and Value.)

The simplest short term strategy would be to find someone in your target market (it could be a friend or a friend of a friend) and take them out to lunch to brainstorm about what would rock his colleagues’ world. If you find they’re a good WOM candidate, then do whatever you have to do to give them an experience with your work that they can talk about.

For a larger strategy, consider the bigger nodes. If there’s an environmental law newsletter, call up the editor and offer to write a story on power of good legal writing.

Or, you could target selected firms with a specialized lunch-time writing seminar that would be held in their office. If you do that, keep in mind that they’re going to have filters in place to keep out the pitches, so your initial target might be paralegals, office managers or receptionists.

The next step would be to create ways for them to spread the word. It could be a blog, follow-up seminars to which they can invite their colleagues, useful how-to documents they can forward around, etc.

You might also want to look into possible cross-promotion partnerships. If you could link with others in the professional development field you might be able to create something even more relevant, credible and valuable than you could on your own. AND you would immediately gain access to their network.

I hope that helps.

For a marketing strategy to work, all the components have to work together, amplifying and enhancing each other, to build a bridge between you and your target market. One of the very most important of those components is marketing copy. (”Copy” is just a fancy way of referring to the text of a marketing piece.) Good copy can ignite a solid marketing campaign. But bad copy is like water on your fireworks.

Sadly, most independent businesses (and even quite a few large businesses) treat copy as nothing more than a tool to convey data and they end up with one marketing dud after another.