The Marketing Power of a Story

Posted on November 19, 2013 by JeffKontur

The other day I was talking with a friend. Not about marketing, just about relationships and the stuff of everyday life.

I made an offhand comment which caused her to stop and ask a question. I said, “You know, there’s a story there.”

To which she laughed and replied, “It’s always a story with you.”

Exactly.

Stories are the way by which human beings relate to one another. Stories make it easier to remember facts and information and to associate with the world around us.

Stories are also the key to good marketing.

If you walk up to ten people and try to sell them something, chances are you’ll get to see the backs of ten people’s heads. But if you walk up to ten people and tell them a story, most of them will stick around at least long enough to find out if your story is interesting or relevant to them. A few may still vanish after deciding it’s not but some will stick around for your story.

In order to sell to strangers, you need several things:

A crowd of properly targeted people who may actually be interested in your story and/or your product.
A story they will be interested in listening to.
A product or service that has a logical tie-in with the story you tell.

A well crafted story, and a product or service that has a logical tie-in to that story, is the key to selling to strangers.

Your story could be about the product itself, about the company that makes it, about people who have benefited from its use or about the need for the product in the world.

With a good enough product and a compelling story, price almost doesn’t matter.

So tell me a good story…

I Don’t Need to Outrun the Bear…

Posted on January 21, 2013 by JeffKontur

There is an old joke whose punchline goes “I don’t need to outrun the bear, I only need to outrun you!”

Photo credit: Darren Blackburn

Along similar lines, there is a humorous expression, “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”

Both of these expressions have been on my mind lately as, to me, they both represent sort of the same thing. That is, the concept that I don’t need to be the best who ever lived at what I do. I don’t even need to be the best who is currently alive. Heck, I don’t even have to be the best I know.

Being best is nice and it’s absolutely a goal I strive toward, but all that’s really necessary in order to be successful is to be my best. If I am competent at what I do and if I always give my best and am always finding way to improve, then I’m already a winner.

Someone looking to work with a copywriter probably isn’t looking to work with the best there is. For a lot of reasons. Perhaps they can’t afford the best. Or can’t wait months for that person’s schedule to free up. Or maybe they don’t even know who the best is and have no real way of finding out.

As long as I am able to do a good job and increase sales, then I am delivering value. As long as that value is far greater than what I charge for it, then I’m giving my clients a good deal.

By the way, this same principle holds true for any profession. I don’t need the greatest dentist who ever lived, I just want someone to fix my tooth. I don’t need the engine whisperer, I just want someone who can fix my car and get it running.

It’s liberating to realize this!

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I Don’t Need to Outrun the Bear…

How “I don’t need to outrun the bear, I only need to outrun you!” applies to marketing.

I don’t need to be the best who ever lived at…

All that’s really necessary in order to be successful is to be MY best.

As long as I deliver value that is far greater than what I charge for it…

I don’t need the engine whisperer, I just want someone who can fix my car.

When Making a Profit can be Deadly to your Business

Posted on December 10, 2012 by JeffKontur

In your marketing, is it necessary to always make a profit? Or to at least have profitability as your goal?

We’re not talking about charities and organizations whose goal is not to make a profit. We’re also not talking about “awareness” campaigns or ones in which your goal is to get people to sign up for a mailing list or something like that. (Some of these things have questionable value to begin with for most small businesses.)

So in cases where you are advertising and your goal is for the ad to generate sales, is it always important to make a profit?

The answer is a big fat NO.

In fact, there are some cases where making a profit from an ad can be deadly to your business.

It all comes down to knowing your average customer.

So this is a strategy that will work only for established businesses. New businesses need sales before they die in infancy.

With an established business that already has some customer base and a sales history, it pays to analyze that sales history.

If you know that, say 12% of your first-time customers stick around to become long-term repeat customers and your typical long-term customer stays with you for three years and spends an average of $3,000 over that time, then you logically want to get as many such customers as possible. It isn’t necessary to make a profit on the very first sale because you will stand to profit on each subsequent sale over the next three years.

Do you want to lose money?

Ironically, there actually are times when it makes sense to lose a bit to attract a customer. Grocery stores do this all the time. Say they advertise coffee for some ridiculously cheap price. They might even be losing a few cents on each can of coffee they sell.

Sure, a few customers will come in, buy the cheap coffee and leave. But most will come in for the cheap coffee and end up doing their whole week’s shopping while they’re there. A few may even go on to become regular customers, having been lured away from a competitor.

Most of the time, however, smart marketers want to price their initial offer so that they just break even. The money brought in from sales should be just enough to pay for the cost of goods plus the cost of marketing.

It’s an educated guessing game but if you can do it, you introduce yourself to a lot of potential new customers at zero cost to you. Some of them will go on to become long-term customers. Now you’ve just made a bundle in long-term profits at no up-front cost.

And all those people who take you up on your introductory offer but then never come back?

Well if you’ve done it right, those people cost you nothing. You made no profit but also lost no money on the deal. You also learned a lot about what will generate response and sales. It’s a win all around.

Knowing and understanding this kind of stuff is where a marketing strategist comes in handy.

Click any of the icons below to retweet these passages from the above article.

Remember, we’ll donate money to charity for every retweet. No purchase necessary. You retweet, we donate. It’s that simple.

There are some cases where making a profit from an ad can be deadly to your business.

Ironically, there actually are times when it makes sense to lose money in business.

Make a bundle in long-term profits at no up-front cost.

Knowing and understanding this kind of stuff is where a marketing strategist comes in handy.

Split Testing

Posted on December 3, 2012 by JeffKontur

Split testing, also sometimes known as A/B testing, is one of the cornerstones of effective marketing.

In it, you test two ideas against each other. It could be two different ads, two versions of a web page, you name it. Measure customer response to determine which is better at achieving your goals, whether they be more signups, more inquiries, more sales, longer time on your website or whatever.

Keep the better version, throw out the “loser” and then try a new idea against the winner.

You may have a winner which stands for many years and beats all challengers or you may have a new winner every week. Either way, you will know with certainty that the ad you are using is the best you can come up with.

Of course I’m glossing over a great deal of hard work and fine detail. There’s formulating a marketing goal, knowing what to track and how to track it, how long do you run the test, how do you allocate the “load” and so on.

Let’s look at that last one a bit.

Say you already have an established winner (called a “control” among professional marketers) that has proven itself over time. Now you have a new challenger which presents a completely new idea and you want to see how well it resonates with your customers compared to your control.

You wouldn’t want to risk 50% of your customers on a gamble but you do want to test the challenger on a large enough sample to make it statistically valid. Depending on the size of your customer base, it’s normal to show the challenger piece to between 5% and 20% of your customers while the rest continue to get the control version.

Split testing requires an incredible amount of meticulous tracking and record keeping. It really takes a full-time, dedicated person to do it right and most big marketers have entire staffs fully dedicated to split testing. That’s a huge commitment but the payoff is more effective marketing and more sales.

Anti-selling

Posted on November 5, 2012 by JeffKontur

Much has been written about selling. That is, trying to get someone to do something: make a purchase or take some other action. Far less has been written about a completely different kind of selling: getting someone to not do something.

It’s the sort of thing that’s rarely attempted.

In 1971, Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh created a cartoonish character named Mr. Yuk. The goal was to keep children away from household poisons.

Up until that time, the more or less universal symbol for poisons was the skull and crossbones. This had two major problems:

The skull and crossbones is also recognized as the universal symbol for pirates. Pirates are appealing to children and are thought of romantically as daring, adventurous sorts. (That daring image is a double whammy, all but daring children to try the hazardous poisons they were supposed to be warning them away from.)
The skull and crossbones was the team logo for a local Pittsburgh professional baseball team. This made the symbol doubly appealing to Pittsburgh children, especially those growing up in a household with sports fans.

The new symbol was developed by a pediatrician, based on careful research and study.

Although it’s still in use today, some subsequent studies have found that it may actually attract some children. Again, the very opposite of its intended effect.

On a much smaller scale, I recently noticed two clever attempts to ward freeloaders off from Wi-Fi hotspots. These were both personal, household internet connections. One was named “FBI Surveillance Van” and the other was named “5,000 Viruses”.

While neither of these is advertising in the strictest sense and both may just be manifestations of the owner’s sense of humor, I find them both clever and fitting with today’s topic.

In theory, convincing someone to not do something is no more difficult than convincing them to do something.

The primary difference I can think of is whether the message is something along the lines of “Go away and never come back” or something more like “Get away from this door but why don’t you go use that other door instead”? It could even be something like “This isn’t the right offer for you but it may be right for someone else”.

Those last two require establishing a fine balance where you ward people off without offending them. Hard stuff indeed.