Feeling your customers’ gas pains
OK, ‘petrol pains’ would have been better - but the bad joke lured me in.
Anyway, Susan Gunelis at Marketing Blurb points to the trend amongst local car dealerships to use free gas cards as a promotional incentive.
It’s an obvious enough linkup if you own a car dealership but says even more about how focusing on your customers’ pain can help identify useful marketing strategies - even if your product / service can’t direct address it.
At the moment petrol price inflation (alongside food price inflation, energy price inflation and house price deflation) are all key in both consumers’ and business’ minds. The pain is clearly financial and also a little personal - a question of peace of mind and fear of the future. Using gas cards is a relatively inexpensive (compared to the price of the car) method to address the customers’ pain.
Would something similar work for car rental firms? What if you were in charge of marketing local public transport alternatives?
“Pump prices getting you down? With The Really Practical Bus Company’s new saver card …”
OK, so that’s a little obvious but the point is clear, once you know your customers’ most urgent pain, your job becomes positioning yourself as a solution to that pain.
What’s hurting your customers right now? How can you address it? Can you use that to differentiate yourself from your competitors or the status quo?
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May 31st, 2008 No comments
Weekend reading
Marketing Ideas, Websites / Blogs
What better way to spend a Saturday afternoon than catching up on some light reading. Here are a few of our top marketing-related finds from the week.
DoshDosh on Strategic Collaborations: A Powerful Way to Promote Yourself. This is a great blog and one of my favourite topics - how to use marketing partnerships to help grow your business.
Copyblogger on Unleashing Your Inner Dork for Better Copywriting (and Marketing). How enthusiasm sells - and how to keep it in your marketing.
Seth’s Blog on Rough Edges. “If you want to get noticed, don’t be so polished.”
Church of the Customer on Is Word-of-mouth Dead Among Faith Based Audiences? When is a demographic just a bunch of different people?
And over on The Society for Word of Mouth’s blog, Ben McConnell posts about Purchasing Word of Mouth. Can you? Should you? (Short post but the comments are worth a read and make sure to check out the company that prompted the question, RepNation.)
Let me know what you think and feel free to email me with any blogs you think are worth a look and a mention (even if it’s your own).
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May 31st, 2008 No comments
Make Your Business Cards Work
Low Cost Marketing Ideas, Websites / Blogs
It’s nice tripping over marketing blogs that you haven’t come across before - especially those that have something useful to say about offline marketing strategies.
They can also serve as a useful reminder of things you know you should be doing but kinda forget ….
Anyway that’s exactly the case with Marketing on Purpose and the post on Business Card Marketing. Simply put your business card can do a lot more than give your details and show off your pretty logo.
Your business card can actually help generate leads all on its own. (Well, not entirely on its own - you do have to give it to someone first.)
“ALWAYS have a Call to Action. Ask them to visit your website for a free report. Direct them to your free e-book download. Invite them to an upcoming teleclass or speech at a nearby event. Make sure you include the titles so they are compelled to get it though. “Register for my free teleclass on Monday March 3rd at www.hotbuttoncopy.com” is not enough. Tell them the title and what they’ll get as a result of attending.
I used to recommend that people use both sides of the card - the front for contact info, tagline, etc and the back for a call to action but now I recommend that my clients just do the one side with all of the information that is likely to stay the same for a long time and then create labels they can slap on the back of each card as new things come up.”
There are a few more nice ideas in the post so it’s worth a look - and I’ll be reworking my business card design ASAP.
May 30th, 2008 1 comment
Neuromarketing - Why Customers Buy
A while back I got an email from Mark Boreland at Greenique and ZenRooms suggesting I read Neuromarketing: Understanding the Buy Buttons in Your Customer’s Brain. A few clicks on Amazon and the book arrived two days later in time to join me on a 4 hour journey to Dublin.
I have to admit a certain fascination with this kind of topic so I was expecting good things - and by and large I got them.
Written in an accessible style, Patrick Renvoise has created a very usable reference with lots of take away information and examples. He uses a simple structure to break down his over-riding concept, “The Six Stimuli”, into a usable, if a little familiar, four step process.
- Diagnose the pain
- Differentiate your claims
- Demonstrate the gain
- Deliver to the Old Brain
While it’s always useful to hear these concepts expressed in new terms - and backed by solid examples and logic - the first three points should be familiar to most marketers and salespeople.
Where the book wins is in its ability to dive a bit deeper into these ideas. For example, rather than just suggesting that we should be addressing the prospect’s needs / pain, Renvoise goes further by asking:
- What is the source of the pain? Is it financial, strategic or personal?
- How intense is the pain?
- How urgent is the need to alleviate the pain?
- Does the prospect acknowledge the pain?
Where the book spends the most time however is in addressing ’selling to the old brain’ - the old brain being the driver of decision making beyond the logic of the first three points.
Again some of the information is familiar. As part of the book’s ’six building blocks’ and ’seven impact boosters’ for selling to the old brain you’ll find clear and memorable claims, proving your claims and boosting your impact by using ‘you’.
But like with the rest of the book, the benefit is in the systematic approach, the ‘do this‘ detail, the examples and the clear take away points.
Although it hasn’t revolutionised the way I think about marketing and selling, Neuromarketing has both reinforced some approaches and introduced new ones for consideration. If anything it’s a kick in the ass to start thinking more about the materials and messages we create.
There’s tons of great info if you haven’t been introduced to this kind of approach previously - and an excellent checklist and reference if you have.
Like all good marketing books, this is one I’ll go back to.
Link: Neuromarketing Blog
Related Topic: Yes! 50 Secrets from the Science of Persuasion
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