MYM Marketing-Expert Newsletters

By Rich Harshaw

Kip Lee’s business was rolling along just fine in Savannah, Georgia in 2005. He’d spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in the newspaper to grow his sunroom and window business and was just making the jump into television advertising. His first several commercials all featured a guy named Ron Sherman who worked for the production company. He had a great personality, a great stage presence, and came across as friendly, knowledgeable, and credible. The commercials worked okay. Not great, but okay.

I started working with Kip right about that time; I wanted to find out how he’d become one of the top sunroom companies in the country despite being in one of the smallest markets. As I was reviewing some of his marketing materials during a new client evaluation, one thing caught my attention instantly: his infomercial.

He’d created the infomercial almost as an afterthought because the production company gave him a good deal on it. It was only run early on Saturday or Sunday mornings and never really accounted for many leads or sales. But something was obvious to me within 30 seconds of watching it for the first time—Kip Lee was successful in his business because he had one of the most friendly, believable, huggable, teddy-bearish demeanors I’d ever seen. People could just feel his sincerity though the screen. When he sat down in someone’s home for a sales presentation, it was over. The prospect knew that this guy wasn’t going to lie to them; they could take Kip Lee to the bank.

Right there and then I told Kip he needed to become a star.

And a star he became. First we put him a series of TV commercials. Then his picture started going in all of his print ads. Before he knew it, people were recognizing him at the grocery store and in restaurants. “Hey, you’re that guy from TV!” Random strangers started to high-five him. He even signed a few autographs at a home show—a guy who sells sunrooms was signing autographs. Think about that for a second.

Apart from just being noticed, the advertising strategy was working for business too. As people started to see Kip on television and get comfortable with his “we take the risk out of home improvement” pitch, they began to believe him. It didn’t happen overnight, but Kip’s cost per lead started shrinking and shrinking and shrinking as his personal stardom was rising. After a while, he started getting plenty of calls even when his ads WERE NOT running. Not to mention friendly “hellos” from strangers while he was pumping gas.

So should you become a star in your ads, too?

There are a few things to consider before taking the plunge. Like anything else, there are pros and cons—and you’d be well advised to step into this arena with your eyes wide open.

Acting Ability: You’d better be able to act if you want to be on TV or radio. Everyone’s seen the dope who gets on the tube and looks like a deer caught in the headlights… or worse, who sounds like he’s reading the cue cards word for word. To really pull it off, you’ve got to have enough personality to charm the crowd, enough acting talent to NOT sound stilted, and enough polish to be perceived as a pro. And trust me… DO NOT ask your spouse for an evaluation on this. Or your mother. Unless you want to turn out like the guy from Idol who sang “Let My People Go.”

The Fame Factor: Do you want to be recognized when you’re buying toilet paper at Costco? Splash your mug on the television for long enough and it’s an absolute certainty. You’ll start getting stares in parking lots, whispers at dinner tables, and points from children. I’m not saying the paparazzi will follow you around or that you’ll get $10 million for exclusive rights to your next baby’s photos… but you will be noticed and called out ON A CONSISTENT BASIS. Also remember that not everyone’s going to love you… some will think you’re cheesy or dopey or annoying. Are you ready to handle that?

Brand You: When you star in your own commercials, you become your brand. Yes, people might catch your company name, but they’re going to remember YOUR name more. This can be a positive, especially if you’re a likable person. But also think to the future—are you planning on selling your business at some point? If so, you’re really hurting the value of the company by wrapping its image up with your personal image. Just something to think about.

Starring in your own commercials can give your business a tremendous boost. I recommend it for people with the right kind of personality and who don’t have plans to sell their business in the future. Just always remember that fame is a two-edged sword—you might not like it so much once you have it. See you in Hollywood!

Fame is a bee.
It has a song–
It has a sting–
Ah, too, it has a wing.

EMILY DICKINSON, “Fame is a bee”

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Want a recipe for marketing disaster? Read on! I’ll serve it up for you just the way you like it… with all the juicy, dumb, dumb details. I’ll show you a company who messed this up so bad that their no-brainer-for-success business model crashed and burned and sent the company into bankruptcy… not once, but TWICE!

Could it really be the marketing that caused the company to experience such dismal results? Certainly there were other factors involved… but you tell me–if your company spent MILLIONS of dollars on advertising for which most people couldn’t even tell what was for sale, let alone what the value proposition was, do you think you’d be far from bankruptcy? Beware of the big, bad advertising agency that wants you to brand your company with something stupid like you’ll see here below.

The company in question is Berge Telecom (name changed (slightly) to protect the not-so-innocent). Their value proposition is very simple. Due to deregulation of the telecommunications industry, they have the ability to sell “Baby Bell” services for 15% to 30% less than the Baby Bell’s themselves. Make sure you understand that: they re-sell the Bell’s services–same lines, same network, same everything–just cheaper. No less quality, no less service (probably better service). It just costs less money. It would be like a new car dealership that opened and sold $25,000 Hondas, straight from the Honda factory, for $18,000 to $20,000. A no-brainer for success, right?

Wrong. Enter the bone-headed ad agencies. Let’s take a look at what they came up for this wonderful company.

The ad has a close-up shot of a frisky looking dog’s head holding a computer mouse in it’s mouth. It has a headline that says, “One Dot Com Minute.” And has some basic copy underneath that says, “Fess Up. Your office needs beefier internet access. So call Berge. We bundle router, line, service in one package, at frisky rates. We include the router, saving you hundreds. And we back it with 7-day a week tech support. Could it be any easier? Call Berge. We’ll come running.” Now remember this is for a telephone company that is trying to sell high speed, or what it calls quote unquote “beefier” internet service for less money than the Bells.

So what is the Activator in this ad? Is it the headline, “One Dot Com Minute?” No, it’s the dog. Remember that an activator is what snaps you out of alpha sleep and into beta alert mode. So you’re thumbing through the newspaper. If you’re somebody who’s interested in dogs–in either a positive or negative way–your reticular activator will signal your brain that there’s something on the page that’s familiar, unusual, or problematic. For most people, it’s familiar; or in other words, they like dogs, so their brain says, “Hey, look at the cute doggie over there on that page.”

Result? If you like dogs, there’s a reasonably good chance you will see this picture and it will pull you out of alpha mode and into beta mode, all of which will happen subconsciously, in a split second, without your being aware. Just like somebody calling your name in a crowded airport baggage claim area. It will force you to look at that ad and then your brain starts searching for additional, clarifying information. “What’s with the dog?” So you’ll read the copy to figure out what’s going on, and you’ll realize that it’s an ad for internet access. Then your brain will begin to short circuit. It’ll say, “dog, internet service, dog, internet service, dog, internet service.” It will struggle to make the connection as to why there’s a dog associated with internet service. See, these two things just don’t normally go together, so it’s a tough connection to make. It’s a false beta.

Now here’s a couple of distinctions for you. Number one, people who don’t like dogs aren’t going to look at this picture no matter what. Their reticular activator won’t flip the switch, so to speak. To them, the dog’s not familiar, unusual, or problematic, so it’s not an activator. So everyone who needs internet access and is not interested in or familiar with dogs will never be pulled out of alpha into beta to consciously see the ad and even have a chance to be sold. Do you see what I’m saying? Why would you put a dog as an activator for an internet service? Because the only people that you are going to reach with this dog are people that like dogs. Is it possible that people who don’t like dogs need internet service? I think it probably is. This is like driving to the corner 7-11 store via Branson, Missouri! You might eventually get there, but you sure traveled a long way to advance a short distance.

Well let’s see, some people do like dogs, so they’ll look at this ad and then they’ll see that it’s for internet service and certainly some people who like dogs will also need internet service so Berge will have a chance to sell to that subset of people. So here’s the question: Why wouldn’t you just go ahead and make the activator based on a hot button–something that’s important and relevant to everyone who needs internet service? A hot button for people who need internet service would be all of the problems that they would potentially be having with their current internet service, or lack thereof.

If you look in the copy, they talk about bundling the router, line, and service in one package. They talk about the availability of tech support, and they talk about saving hundreds of dollars. So I’m guessing some of the hot buttons would be, let’s see–not having the router, line, and service bundled, lack of available tech support, and costs that are way higher than they should be and could be. Now I don’t know if these are the actual, legitimate hot buttons or not, but I know on thing for freaking sure: the dog in this ad ain’t the prospects’ hot button! See, the dog is an activator, but not a hot button. I’ve taken the liberty to write a new ad based on the hot buttons we culled out of the text of the original ad. Notice how the hot buttons take the center stage now, and how the ad follows the formula of interrupt, engage, educate, and offer.

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Link popularity is very important with regards to search engine placement or ranking. Most Search Engines including Google, place much importance in a Website’s link popularity. They use the number of outgoing and incoming links to a Website to determine the importance ( relevance ) of the Website for a particular keyword or keyword phrase. However, incoming links are more important than outgoing links.

The search engine Google, uses its PagerRank (PR) as a measure of the link popularly of a Website. You can easily check the PR of any site you wish at this link: http://www.prchecker.info/check_page_rank.php. The PR of a site ranges from 0 to 10. The higher the number, the better.

Why Link Popularity

Search Engine builders, continuously research ways to make their search engine result pages (SERPs) relevant to users. Different methods have been employed to determine the most relevant pages. Methods such as keywords in title, keywords in metatags, keywords in filename, keywords in headings, keywords in links, keywords in content of pages, etc.

Webmasters have found ways to manipulate these, thereby improving their ranking in the Serps. The latest method is link popularity. Obtaining quality links from good Websites is not easy. A good Website will only link to you if there is some benefit to that site or that site’s visitors. However, Webmasters have again found a way of beating this latest hurdle. They do this through reciprocal linking. I see search engines rejecting reciprocal linking in future because this is an artificial way of boosting link popularity. The only sure way for search engines to ascertain link popularity will have to be one way incoming links.

Do’s And Don’ts Of Site Linking

1. Don’t do reciprocal linking with sites that spam. Your outgoing links to unethical sites could get you into trouble with search engines.

2. Don’t link to FFA link farms. You might be penalized by the search engines.

3. Keep a close watch on your link partners always. Link to relevant and complementary sites. The higher the PR of the site, the better.

4. Obtain one-way incoming links when possible. It’s the best. Use anchor text in links.

5. Most important of all, create good, original and unique content and one way incoming links will come naturally.

Reciprocal Linking

Reciprocal linking is simply exchanging links with other webmasters in order to boost link popularity. It involves sending e-mails to webmasters of sites with relevant and complementary content.

How To Do Reciprocal Linking

Write a nice and polite e-mail to the Webmaster you wish to exchange links with. However, take note of the following points:

1. Visit the sites you want to exchange links with so that you have an idea of what the site is about.

2. Before visiting the sites, download the Google and Alexa tool bars. The Google tool bar gives you the PR of the sites. The Alexa tool bar gives you an approximation of the site’s traffic and sites that are linking to it. Download the Alexa tool bar from: http://www.alexa.com.

3. Mention one or two things about the site in your e-mail. Explain how beneficial a link exchange will be for both sites and site visitors. You can put a link to the site before sending your e-mail. Tell the Webmaster where to locate the link. Provide the keywords or keyword phrase with which you want to be linked.

4. Make it known on your site that you are willing to exchange links. You can use a “link to us” or “reciprocal linking” link. You can also use a web-form so that potential link partners can fill in their details.

Points To Note

Most sites do not have their contact email on their sites because of spammers or email harvester software. You can contact webmasters through their “contact us” form or use the “whois” link on any domain service provider (Network Solutions, NameSecure, GoDaddy, etc.) to obtain information on how to contact the webmaster. You can run your link popularity campaign through third parties such as LinkExchanged.com but their prices seem a little bit on the high side. You can also use software such as Zeus and Arelis. These software apps automate most of the manual tasks that go into building link popularity. However, care must be taken when using them. One could be labeled a spammer, if they are used incorrectly.

One Way Incoming Linking

One way incoming links, are the best type of links to have for your site. They increase your PR and link popularity. They indicate to the search engines that your site is an authority on the keyword or keyword phrase used to link to you. However, incoming links are the most difficult to acquire. You can build your one way incoming links using the following strategies.

1. Build good quality websites or web pages with original, unique content. With great content, other webmasters will naturally refer visitors through links to your site.

2. Provide a free, useful service or tool on your site. For example, a link popularity check tool. This will bring repeat visitors and other webmasters will refer visitors to your site.

3. Give away something for free at your site. It could be a quality e-book, a useful program, software trial download, or a gift in exchange for links. You may give out the gifts after ascertaining that they have linked to your site. Some webmasters might bring down the links after collecting the gift, but many sites will still retain your links. Although you might not get many high PR sites linking to you, lots of low PR sites will still enhance your link popularity.

4. You can organize an award so that winners will link to you before claiming their prizes. Be sure to make your policy on this clear enough.

5. Pay to be listed in niche directories. Provide good topical articles on your site with links to your home page. Give permission to other webmasters to use at their sites.

To Cap It

As you go through the web, running your e-business everyday, you will discover that the most successful sites are those that give something away for free. Sites that are an authority in their segment of the market are those that provide useful content, or free tools, service, and/or software. Building such sites takes a lot of patience and perseverance, but, in the end, the reward is immense.

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Ever been to a restaurant that you really liked, and went back at least once every two months or so? Are they good at inviting you back for more? If they’re like most restaurants, even good ones, they arrogantly assume that their great cuisine is going to lure you back all by itself.

Not that It’s a bad thing. And not that you should be upset. But you are busy, and you do have other things to think about. So when the topic of food comes up, I’ll bet you usually do something easier or faster or cheaper. That favorite restaurant only comes in the rotation every so often, and as such, they’ve blown their chance to get a raving fan like you back over and over.

Retail stores of all kinds are notorious one-shot sellers. Car washes, dry cleaners, restaurants, hair salons, health food stores, video rentals, you name it; they all use the cross-their-fingers-and-pray-they’ll-come-back-for-more method. Again, it’s not that customers WON’T come back; it’s that retail stores generally don’t make a proactive effort to get them back.

Ever heard the saying, “Even a dead fish can float down stream” before? Many businesses just lazily float down the river gathering whatever business happens to come their way. People need food, so a certain number are going to show up in a given restaurant each day from sheer momentum. It’s not calculated; it’s inevitable.

Here’s a better strategy: swim like crazy! Go out and get the business!

Here’s an easy formula for getting repeat business that can be implemented by any kind of business—not just retail. First, capture the names and addresses of all of your customers. Second, contact all of your customers and ask them for more business. And third, make them a special offer or offer them a gift when you ask for more business. I know it sounds simple—and it is. But the truth is very few businesses execute it.

Let me show you how this works. Let’s say you own a new and relatively unknown municipal golf course in your town. You’re just a few miles away from the more established, more well-known golf course, and they seem to be getting a lot of the business. How could you make this formula work for you? For this example, I don’t want to concentrate on getting new customers out to golf for the first time. Right now I want to concentrate on how to get the customers you do get to come back for more golf.

Most businesses, if they put any thought at all into getting repeat sales, would implement a lame mailing campaign with some kind of static, non-compelling brochure or postcard that wouldn’t even get the prospect into beta mode, let alone coax him into a return visit. But let’s review our formula. First, capture the names and addresses of all of your customers. Second, contact all of your customers and ask them for more business. And third, make them a special offer or offer them a gift when you ask for more business.

Here’s what you would need to do. First, print up some professional-looking cards with a space for each customer to write his name, address, telephone number, and email address. The top of the card should read “Grand Prize Eligibility Card” or something similar. After each golfer has paid, but not yet left the clubhouse for the course, have the cashier hand each person one of the cards to fill out. Don’t have a stack of them sitting out so it looks like any schlep can fill it out as many times as they want. Have the cashier pull it out from behind the counter.

The cashier would then tell the golfers that your golf course is giving away a complete round of golf for four—including free range balls, cart rental, unlimited 19th hole drinks, and snacks. The cashier should tell the golfers that they have one drawing per week, and that there is an average of 100 to 200 cards per week, so the chances of winning are actually pretty good. Maybe even a photo collage of the previous winners would be a nice touch. Have the cashier limit registrations to one card per person in the golfing party. The cashier would then tell them that the winner would be notified by email.

Assuming you can get most of the golfers to fill out the card, you now have nice customer list to work with. Don’t underestimate how powerful this can be, and how far ahead of the game you already are compared to most businesses. So now it’s time to execute the systematic contacting of the customers and ask them for more business, and to do so by making them a special offer or offering a gift.

First, pick a winning card every week and email the winner to inform them of their good fortune. That’s the obvious part. But the strategy does not end there. In fact, it’s only just begun. Send an email to everyone else who entered that week with a subject line that says:

Congratulations! You’ve Won The Weekly Drawing From River Bend Golf Course.

Immediately, this subject line will interrupt and engage. You might think that this email might get lost in the shuffle of bogus spam emails that say that the person has won a prize. Give your brain more credit than that. The reticular activator will immediately pick the words River Bend Golf Course and Weekly Drawing as familiar, and instantly recall having filled out the card. Now here’s what the email should say:

Dear Larry,

My name is Bob Jones, owner of the River Bend Golf Course. I’d like to thank you for entering our drawing for a complete round of golf for four with all the goodies that go with it. Jack Stevens of Smithville won the prize, and as you can imagine, he’s pretty excited. I’m sorry you didn’t win the first prize.

But here’s the good news. You’ve won a valuable second prize. If you will print out this email and bring it the next time you come, I will present you with two large buckets of range balls and your cart rental will be free for you and your guest.

Congratulations on your prize. We hope to see you soon.

Bob Jones, Owner

P.S. Your prize is good any time in the next month. You don’t need to call ahead, but please remember to bring a copy of this email with you. Thanks again.

So how do you think this will work? What if you collected 500 entries in a month, and you sent out 500 emails with second prize offers. If only 10% of the people respond, that’s 50 people who are coming to the golf course for the second time.

Since they have to bring in a copy of the email to claim their prize, the cashier can greet them by name and congratulate them. The range balls and free cart rental cost you basically nothing, and a certain percentage of these repeat customers will become regular customers. And since you now have a complete customer list, you can now contact any or all of your customers at any time for any reason.

You’ll probably want to get contact management software like Act or Goldmine to help you keep track of your customers and remind you of who you’ve made offers to and who’s taken you up on them. The computer software can also help to actually send out the emails.

Now here’s the problem with this scenario: most people won’t do it. It’s too much hassle and too much problem. It’s too hard to administer, and too hard to take the time to manage it via the software program. But if you feel like that, I have a very serious question for you: Why in heck did you get into business in the first place? The amount of time it takes to cultivate perpetual sales compared to the return on investment is ridiculous. It’s a no-brainer cash cow. There is really no excuse for not putting this kind of system into place.

I told you that we were going to discuss how to get first time or infrequent customers to become repeat customers using this strategy, and that in this section we weren’t going to focus on new customer acquisition. But let me show you how easy it is to use this same strategy to get new customers. Sorry, I couldn’t resist!

All you really have to do is alter the formula a little bit. Instead of gathering the names of your current customers, buy or rent a list of prospective customers from a list brokerage company. Once you have your list, use the same formula: send a letter that asks for their business and offers a reward. Here’s a way to start: get a list of certain types of people or professions. Let’s say you decide to get accountants out to your golf course. You can rent a list of CPA’s in your area for just a few cents per name. There should be anywhere from a couple hundred to a few thousand—and there’s a good chance that many of them play golf. Write them a letter that goes something like this:

Dear David,

I’m writing you this letter because you’re a CPA.

My name is Bob Jones, owner of the River Bend Golf Course here in Silver Springs. Every day for the rest of this month, I’m going to give two large buckets of range balls and free cart rental to every CPA and their guest that play golf at my golf course.

My reason for being nice to CPA’ is actually pretty weird; ask me about it when you come in. Make sure you bring this letter with you.

I hope to see you soon!

Sincerely,

Bob Jones, Owner

It’s not the classical marketing letter, but it does interrupt and engage. It has a specific call to action, and you know what, it works. Your reason for being so nice to CPA’s could be anything. Your accountant saved you a lot of money last year, your best friend from college is a CPA. It could be anything. Who cares about the reason, just get them in there! After all the CPA’s have taken you up on your offer, write the same letter to lawyers or executives or sales managers or anyone you can think of that you can get a list of that might play golf.

You must proactively seek to recruit your customers back using Perpetual Selling Strategies. Most businesses let their customers dictate what their buying habits will be—how often they’ll come back, how much they’ll spend when they do buy, etc. Most businesses are reactive when it comes to re-selling their customers. If you already have sunk the cost of generating and nurturing a customer once, for heaven’s sake, get them to perpetually come back for more!

Otherwise you’ll end up like that dead fish… floating down the stream relying on sheer momentum to carry you to an unknown destination.

We invite you to check out our automated contact management system we call a “hopper system” by going to http://www.amgcrm.com/. 

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And Other Important Questions Your Brain Demands An Answer To…

In a recent article, Brain-Friendly Advertising, we talked about the importance of “interrupting” your prospects by breaking them out of alpha “sleep” mode and into beta “alert” mode, and how the reticular activator is the conduit from one to the other. If you’re not up to speed on those concepts, please go back and read that article. What happens in the 2.3 nano-seconds after your prospect has been interrupted will determine whether or not you’ll actually have a chance to SELL SOMETHING (the whole point, remember!).

During those critical 2.3 nano-seconds, the brain immediately and subconsciously searches for additional clarifying information looking for an answer to the question, “What’s this all about? How does this affect me? Do I need to do anything about this?” On a subconscious level, the brain goes on a fact-finding mission. The bottom line is this: the brain wants to know “How is this RELEVANT and important to me? Should I allocate any conscious bandwidth to this? So it searches for additional facts. If it finds them, it will become engaged; if not, it will quickly revert to alpha mode. These important and relevant issues are called HOT-BUTTONS.

If you’re in a room with a TV on and you’re a golf fan and your reticular activator detects that Tiger Woods is on the television, it notices that on a conscious level because Tiger Woods is familiar. He’s an activator. Then your brain immediately asks, “Hey, what the heck is Tiger Woods doing driving that goofy looking car? Is there anything there that’s relevant or important to me?”  Or in other words, what your brain is looking for is a “Hot Button”. But what typically happens is your brain determines that the Buick Rendezvous is not relevant or important to you…it doesn’t do anything to solve any of your problems.  So, in other words, it’s not a hot button and your brain reverts immediately back into Alpha Mode.

Let me give you an example. Let’s say you own a chain of camera stores and you’re trying to promote digital cameras in your advertising. Let’s say it’s a print ad that’s to appear in the newspaper. What would you do? What would you say in the ad? Well, you could find a picture of a monkey or a snake or a wildebeast or something holding a camera. There would be some interrupt value there based on either the familiarity or unusual nature of the animal you choose. The animal would be the activator. Or you could hire a celebrity to hold a camera. Or a scantily clad woman.All of these techniques might work to varying degrees, but they don’t address the main issue when it comes to digital cameras? See, if you use an activator that’s not based on a problem, chances are you’ll create what we call a “false beta” and the prospect won’t become engaged. We’ll discuss “false betas” here in just a minute.

See, we’re tapping into problems they already have…we’re not trying to manufacture them. We are merely poking those problems or pointing out those problems so their reticular activator notices and brings them up on the active radar screen.  This is in essence a reticular activator double-whammy because you’re hitting their problematic button at the same time you’re hitting their familiar button.  After all, everybody’s familiar with whatever it is that’s painful and problematic to them! Let me repeat that one more time so it really sinks in: when you key in on problems, you’re hitting the problematic button at the same time you’re hitting their familiar button… which is a reticular activator double-whammy because everyone’s familiar with their own problems.

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The Curse Of Knowledge: The More You Know, The Worse Off You Are

On a warm, sunny spring day last year, my mom offered to take my kids to the park for lunch. Within 10 minutes of arriving, my five year-old son complained that he had to go to the bathroom. Grandma looked around and realized there weren’t any bathrooms to be found, so she shrugged her shoulders and pointed to a spot about 30 yards away and said, “Go behind that tree.”

A few minutes later, the boy appeared again with a second complaint—this time with his shorts around his ankles: “Grandma, I can’t find the toilet paper!”

Ahhh… the joys of communicating with another human being. As we all know, what is so simple and makes so much sense to one person isn’t always so simple and sensible to another. We’ve all experienced the frustration of saying something to an employee, friend, or spouse (gulp!), and having them hear something totally different than we intended.

The reason we have these communication gaps has a lot to with what’s known as a “wordprint.” A wordprint is a collection of information about something or some topic in your memory. If someone says they saw a killer whale on TV, you see something in your mind that looks like a big black and white fish with a smile full of small teeth with a name like Shamu.

 

But a wordprint is not just a definition, which only offers a physical description of something. A wordprint, includes a physical description plus attaches a meaning to the word, based on our individual experiences. My wife saw a movie called Orca when she was 6 ½ years old; ever since, her wordprint for “killer whale” has included people in boats being stalked and eaten by those big black and white fish. When we went to Sea World recently, she only agreed to attend the Shamu performance if she could sit on the back row on the aisle—so she could escape quickly if necessary. I’m not making this up.

 

Similarly, when my teenage son says he’s starving, it means he hasn’t eaten for 3 hours and he “needs” a pop tart—meanwhile, that same word probably has an entirely different meaning to the nearly 1 billion chronically malnourished people on this planet. For me, the word “cruise” isn’t just a picture of a big boat on a brochure anymore—not since last October, anyway. Now it’s now loaded with vivid images of my kids laughing, non-stop buffet gluttony (aka eating “cruise style!”), and the gentle rocking motion of an ENORMOUS ship (thank you Disney Cruise Lines!). And the phrase “go to the bathroom behind that tree” evidently has two very different meanings for a 62 year-old grandma and her 5 year-old grandson.

 

So here’s the point: your wordprint and somebody else’s wordprint might be very different—for the exact same word or phrase… and herein lies the root of many serious communications problems—which are almost CERTAINLY showing up in your advertising.

 

For instance, we have a sunroom client who has innovated what they consider to be the “industry’s best warranties, including 4 separate documents: 1) a price protection guarantee, 2) a lifetime glass replacement warranty, 3) a lifetime materials and labor warrantee, and 4) a money-back guarantee, which basically states that if the workmanship doesn’t meet certain requirements within a certain timeframe, the company will tear down the sunroom and either re-build it at their own expense, or return the home to it’s original condition.

 

Sounds pretty impressive, right? When I tell contractors in my seminars about these warranties, I often get a nervous laughter, as if to say “they don’t really do THAT, do they?” The warranties really are pretty good—they do, in fact, protect the consumer against poor workmanship and future problems. And given the fact that not every contractor is 100% reliable, competent, and/or honest, you’d think that the sunroom buying public would be clamoring to do business with this company with its exceptional warranties.

 

So why then, when they’ve run ads in the past that say, “We take the risk out of home improvement” or “we have the industry’s best warranties,” do the readers yawn themselves to sleep?

 

To understand why, let me introduce you to a fun little game we played called “tappers & listeners.” We divided people into two groups, “tappers” or “listeners.” Tappers received a list of 25 common songs like “Take Me Out To The Ball Park,” “Jingle Bells,” and “God Bless America.” The tapper’s job was to tap 15 of the songs, one at a time, on a table with his knuckles while the listeners tried to guess the tunes.¹  Listeners were not provided with the list of songs—they were only told that they were everyday songs.

 

The results? Listeners with no particular music background² only guessed correctly about 6% of the time—or in other words, 94% of the time, they couldn’t tell “Happy Birthday” from “It’s A Small World”. The tappers, meanwhile, got a kick out of watching their partners fail. They couldn’t understand why listeners couldn’t “hear” the tunes that they were plainly tapping out on the tables.

 

Here’s the key point: When you’re assigned to be the tapper, it’s impossible to NOT hear the tune in your head. In fact, you can hear it in full stereo surround sound—with the orchestra. The listeners, on the other hand, only hear a monotone set of like-sounding taps. They’re only being given a small fraction of the information needed to decipher the song—the melody. But look at what they’re NOT getting—no individual notes, not words, no rhythm. Just taps.

 

The problem is that when we know something, it’s nearly impossible for us to imagine what it’s like NOT to know it. This is where communication becomes tricky—because the more we know about something, the harder it is for us to truly “see the world through John Smith’s eyes.” We tend to impose our set of knowledge on the person we’re communicating with.

 

So back to our sunroom client with the great warranties. He taps out a song called “We take the risk out of home improvement.” As he’s tapping that song (in an advertisement, on a website, etc.) he’s got the last 25 years of history firmly entrenched in his mind. He remembers the time one of his crews installed a sunroom improperly and it gushed like Niagra Falls during the first heavy rainstorm. He remembers how, after three failed attempts to fix the problem, he ordered the entire sunroom ripped down and installed again from scratch. He remembers how he sent the homeowner on a 4 day vacation while he had 3 crews work overtime to get it done quickly. He remembers how he ended up losing over $12,000 in real hard cash on that job. And he remembers how thrilled the customer was that he’d actually gone through all that trouble to make it right. And he remembers a dozen other jobs during the history of the company where they’d gone to extraordinary lengths to do right by the customer.

 

That’s what we call “full stereo surround sound—with the orchestra.”

 

Meanwhile, the customer sees his ad declaring that they “take the risk out of home improvement,” and yawns. His wordprint of “low risk” doesn’t have the depth and richness of history that the company owner’s does.

 

Okay, so how do you fix this? How do we move past platitudes and into meaningful communication that overcomes the curse of knowledge? The key is to realize that advertising and salesmanship are really not very different. You’d never imagine sending a salesman in to simply say “we take the risk out of home improvement,” and then just sit there. The sales person, either through training or common sense, would know to tell the stories that make the concept come alive. The sales person wouldn’t just tell a brief story about the time the sunroom had to be ripped down and built again from scratch… he’d include every little detail: the exact date, the name of the customer, the neighborhood of the customer, why the sunroom was installed improperly in the first place, how the boss exploded and insisted that the problem be fixed, the fact that they had to rush an order to the factory for the room, how they shut down production on 5 other jobs that were being done to get the manpower to fix it, etc.

 

Clear communication is in the details! If grandma had only taken a very brief moment to clarify what “need to go to the bathroom” meant to the 5 year old!

 

So here’s my advice to you: go ahead and clearly communicate details IN YOUR MARKETING. How’s this for a print ad? (click on the ad to see a full page view)

You might think this is too much text for an ad—but is it really? Let me ask you this: why does it take a sunroom salesman 2 or 3 hours in your home to go through a demonstration and make the sale? The answer is obvious—because it takes that long to help you “hear” the song he’s tapping. It takes some time to get their wordprints and your wordprints to match up so you’re “on the same page.”

 

In advertising, there is no such thing as “too much text” or “too little text.” There is only such a thing as “what is interesting and relevant to the prospect?” We create plenty of ads for our clients that are short and feature lots of pictures. We also create ads that are long and contain a lot of words. But as long as you can pass the interesting and relevant test, your prospects will read anything you can throw at them. After all, a sunroom is a $35,000 investment—so trust me when I say they’ll take some time to read an ad, as long as the information is interesting and relevant. It has to help facilitate their decision making process.

 

So let’s look at how this concept of wordprints and communication breakdown might affect a company selling replacement windows. You might think that talking about energy efficiency as it relates to windows is an important topic. In fact, almost every single company in the industry runs ads that feature claims about saving on energy bills and windows that “you’ll pay for whether or not you actually buy them.”

 

But here’s the problem with that approach—and why it so rarely works the they’d like for it to. The vast majority of the people who NEED replacement windows don’t even realize that their windows are a problem. The might know that their energy bills are higher than they’d like them to be, but they don’t realize that the windows are the culprit. They think that energy is just expensive. Or their bills have always been high so that’s just the way it is.

 

Meanwhile, the window company’s entire livelihood is based on people knowing and believing that their windows are causing their energy bills to be high. They’ve installed over 10,000 windows in the last 20 years, and can discuss the merits of argon, krypton, and extrusions till they’re blue in the face. In other words, they live inside a symphony hall that plays a song called “your windows are costing you too much in energy” 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They can’t imagine what it’s like for somebody to NOT be aware that their windows are causing them too lose money on their energy bills. How could anybody be that stupid!?

 

Their wordprint for “lower energy bills” and their prospects’ wordprint just don’t match up.

 

Here’s what needs to be realized—the message of “saving on your energy bills” is played so often by so many different kinds of companies, that John Smith, your prospect, just tunes it out. Here’s a short list of companies playing the same tune in their advertising: electric companies, roofing companies, radiant barrier companies, air conditioning system & service companies, light bulb companies, ceiling fan companies, automobile companies, gasoline companies, and at least a dozen more. Now the window company shows up on the scene feebly tapping “save money on your energy bills.” What did they expect would happen? They’d get flooded with calls? They throw a phrase out there and expect everyone’s wordprint will match up? The prospect’s not the stupid one!

 

Remember—the listeners’ wordprint is missing critical pieces of information. Namely, they’re missing the piece of information that their windows are causing the problem in the first place. To get this point across to them, we’ll need to create ads with headlines that communicate this point to them in dramatic fashion. Here are a few possibilities:

 

•         Shocking Discovery: High Energy Bills Are Not Caused By High Energy Prices

•         90% Of Homeowners Are Not Aware That High Energy Bills Are Primarily Caused By Inefficient Windows

•         How To Instantly Cut Your Electric Bill By 40% Without Switching Power Companies And Without Turning Lights Off

•         Want To Guess What The #1 Cause Of High Electric Bills Is? (hint: it has nothing to do with the electric company’s rates)

•         What Is The Real Cause Of Your High Electric Bill? Believe It Or Not, It Has Nothing To Do With What Electric Company You Choose.

•         “My July Electric Bill Went From $404 Last Year To Just $268 This Year—And I Only Made One Simple Change In My Home.”

•         I Can Guarantee You A 40% Reduction In Your Electric Bill—Without Having To Switch Electric Companies Or Turn Off Any Lights

•         The Windows On Your Home Are The Energy Sucking Equivalent Of A Hummer H2 Stuck In Stop & Go Traffic.

•         Your Windows Are SUCKING Money Out Of Your House—And You Didn’t Even Know It.

•         Here’s A Quick & Easy Way To Slash Your Electric Bill By 30% to 40%… Without Switching Electric Companies.

•         Every Window In Your House Is Costing You $10 Per Month MORE Than It Should In Electricity—If You Have 20 Windows, You’re Wasting $200.

•         FREE Window Meter Test Will Tell You If Your Windows Are Wasting Your Money Or Not.

 

These headlines are relevant to the prospect without throwing the same old, usual junk at them that they hear all the time from other companies who are in the energy savings business. Here’s a radio ad that conveys the same point:

 

We’ve had a pretty cold winter this year, and I’ve heard a lot of people complaining about high energy bills. Did you know there’s a good chance that your bill is 20% to 40% higher than it should be simply because you have lousy windows? Hear me out on this one—you’re probably losing money, even if your house is NEW. You might think if you don’t hear wind whistling in that your windows are fine. NOT TRUE. The real problem has to do with how well they insulate—which has to do with lack of proper coatings on the glass, the kind of air between the glass, and the materials the windows are made out of. Trust me—you need to at least LOOK INTO THIS—it could save you a ton of money. My friend Mike Nickel at American Remodeling has a high-tech tool called a “window meter” that measures how well your windows are insulating your home… and isolates problem areas. Mike normally charges $80 for a window meter analysis and report, but will come out to your home and do the test for FREE if you’re one of the first 15 listeners who call right now. If you do need new windows, Mike’s got an instant rebate of $200 per window—but only through February. So call for the free Window Meter test—the number’s 1-800-CALL NOW. Quit complaining about high energy bills and do something about it—call for the free Window Meter test at 1-800-CALL NOW right now.

 

So where do we go from here? First of all, just be aware that your definition of a word—your wordprint—is probably significantly different that your prospects’ definition. Your expertise in your field is actually hurting you. Next, once you know and admit that, the quest becomes to find out specific and clear ways to communicate in your advertising about issues that are important and relevant to your prospective customers. Don’t be afraid to say too much… chances are that you’ll be helping yourself by explaining your REAL meaning. And finally, always have somebody who’s not in your industry read your ads before you send them out into the expensive media—you’ll be surprised at how valuable this little step can be to garner valuable feedback on your messaging.

 

And next time you’re at the park, near a tree—watch your step!

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¹ I first heard of this game in the book “Made To Stick” by Chip & Dan Heath, who cited a 1990 study by Stanford University student Elizabeth Newton. But since her data was inaccessible, I recreated the game myself and conducted my own experiment.

 

² We found that listeners who had formal music training were able to pick out the tunes at a much higher rate—from 30% to 50% of the time.

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(This article was originally published and copyrighted © by Richard Harshaw, and is re-published here with permission).

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There are two factors at work in a prospect’s subconscious mind when he’s considering doing business with you: confidence and risk. Your job in advertising is to raise confidence and lower risk. If you successfully do that, you’ll sew up all the business. So let’s talk first about confidence. The problem is that in today’s marketplace, people are more jaded, skeptical, and weary. Weary of getting ripped off. Jaded from bad service. Skeptical of offers that sound too good to be true. In short, people are generally in a defensive buying position. As a result, the tendency is to either do nothing, or to stick with their current supplier even if the relationship isn’t all that great. People figure it’s safer to stay in a so-so relationship than test the waters of finding a new company to do business with.

You can probably mentally validate this in your own personal buying habits. Have you ever gotten fed up with a company you do business with, gone to the yellow pages and called around looking for someone better? Then, frustrated and exhausted, meekly returned to the original culprit because of a perceived lack of better options? Of course you have. We all have. The reason for this is the “confidence gap”. The customer doesn’t have the ability to make any distinction between the options. Information is so similar it’s impossible to determine who is any better or worse or different than any of the others. There are a lot of different reasons for this probably, but the biggest is the huge number of choices that people have.

Back in the old days when you wanted to buy a Ford truck, where did you go? To the Ford dealership. Which Ford dealership? THE only Ford dealership within hundreds of miles. And when you got to the dealership, where specifically within the dealership did you go to find out information on the vehicle? That’s right - to the salesperson. And why did you go to the salesperson? Was it because you like being “hammer-dunked” by him? Did you enjoy pain more then than you do now? Of course not. The reason you went to the dealership and then to the salesperson was because it was the ONLY way you could find out any information about the vehicle. It was your ONLY choice.

So what about now? Where do you go to buy a Ford truck now? To one of the 17 Ford dealerships within a 50 mile radius of your house. Or, if you’re like most car buyers, you go to 4 or 5 of them after you have surfed the internet for information. Let me take this a step further to show you how confidence gets eroded. If you’ve ever bought a car, you’ve experienced the hassle of finding the best deal. You look in the paper and see the model you want advertised for a really low price. When you get to the dealership you find out that it was a totally stripped down model and there was only one of them anyway and it was painted avocado green. But hey, they’ve got the one you wanted for only $12,000 more than the one in the ad. So next time you notice in the ad the really small print that says “only one available at this price.” Won’t fall for that trick again, will you? Well, now you’re tired so you flip on the tube and wouldn’t you know it, there’s a commercial for a Ford dealership and they say that they’ve got the largest inventory of Fords in the state. So you make a mental note to go check that place out. You flip the channel and there’s another commercial for a different Ford dealership and guess what? They’re the largest volume Ford dealership in the city. Wow! How can that be true? As you’re driving over to settle the issue of who’s actually the largest, you hear an ad on the radio for a leasing company that says you’d be a fool to buy a car when leasing is so much cheaper…and they can handle all the details right over the phone. Then you see a billboard for vehix.com. Okay, I’ll stop here. But you tell me, is this a realistic scenario or am I just making it up? Who do you have confidence in after trying to sort that mess out? The problem is that all the sellers are trying to trick buyers into coming into their showroom so they can pressure them into paying too much for something they didn’t want. The buyer-seller relationship is totally adversarial or at best, apathetic.

Not to beat a dead horse, but it’s the confidence gap. You don’t have any ability to make any distinction whether any of the options are any different or any better than any of the others. So the big question then, obviously, is how do you overcome this? How do you build confidence? There are three key concepts to building confidence; you must do these if you want people to trust your business. Here they are stated in simple terms:

• Find out what they want
• Find out how to give it to them
• Learn to communicate what you do in a way that’s believable and embraceable

First, find out what they want. Simple enough, right? Here’s how you find out: ASK. That’s it. Ask. Now the tricky part is how you ask and what you ask. In our Monopolize Your Marketplace programs & seminars, we go into a lot of detail about how to conduct surveys and find out exactly what your customers want. We don’t have time to go into that much detail here, so I’ll just give you some basics. Ask your current customers, past customers, and prospects what they want in your kind of business. But don’t just go ask them, “What do YOU look for in a printing company…or in a temporary personnel service…or in a hair salon? Or whatever your business is. Put some thought into it beforehand. Identify what some of the typical problems are when doing business in your industry. Figure out some things that you could do that customers might really like and appreciate. Then when you go to talk to your customers, in addition to just asking them what they’re looking for when doing business in your industry, you can bounce your ideas off them and validate whether or not the things you’ve identified as important or innovative are actually important or innovative. But here’s the important thing: Don’t neglect to ask. Don’t assume you just already know. If you did know, you’d already have all the business, right? So just ASK!

Second step to gaining confidence is to give the customer what they want. If you took the time to ask and you’ve figured out what they want, GIVE IT TO THEM. Does this sound familiar at all? What I’m describing here is your inside reality. I’m giving you the process in simple terms for crafting your inside reality so it reflects what your customers want. Here’s a tip: In today’s competitive marketplace, you’ve got to innovate and make your business better by a big margin. You can’t just make your business 5% better or 10% better than the competition. It’s not enough to generate the confidence people need to give you a try. You have to make your business 50% better or 100% better or 300% better than the other options. Here’s why: if you don’t, someone else will. You need to have a good inside reality if you want to engender confidence with your prospects and customers. It’s a critical step.

The third step to gaining confidence is the really tricky one and that’s saying what you do is innovative in a way that is believable and embraceable. And what’s that? It’s your outside perception. You need to learn how to take your inside reality and communicate it in a way that breaks through the clutter of noise in the marketplace, bridges the confidence gap, and gains the confidence of your prospects.

See how this stuff all works together? Have something good to say. Say it well. Say it often. Find out what they want. Give them what they want. Say it in a way that’s believable. The inside reality. The outside perception. These concepts are all very simple to understand.  To learn more read the book, listen to one of our MYM courses, or schedule time with one of our consultants.

(This article was originally published and copyrighted © by Richard Harshaw, and is re-published here with permission).

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The second you quit being the ‘best deal’ for your customer, he’ll drop you like a hot potato. Regardless of how many lunches you’ve bought him or birthdays you’ve remembered.

Every business we’ve ever consulted tells us the same thing about their sales force. They say that their industry is different from all the others and the only effective way for their salespeople to sell is to build buddy-buddy relationships with their prospects and customers. We hear it from printers, bankers, jewelers, accountants, industrial equipment manufacturers, office equipment distributors…and every other industry that sells stuff.

The argument usually goes something like this: “You see, in our industry, people put a lot of thought into this type of decision. They just don’t go out and buy from whoever has the prettiest advertisements. As a matter of fact, we still have many of the same customers from when my grandfather owned the business. Now their grandsons buy from us. You just can’t change these things overnight.”

Relationship Selling Is A Myth. Like all myths, there are some elements of truth to it. Yes, it’s true that your customers should like you. Yes, it’s true that you can’t necessarily influence big buying decisions overnight. But get one thing perfectly clear - your customers buy from you for one reason: they believe you have “the best deal.”

Now their definition of what’s the best deal may be different from the next person’s. But generally, it has a lot to do with a combination of things like convenience, quality, consistency, service, and price. Usually, about 80% of a given target market will have the same needs, the same problems they want solved, and the same attitudes about buying. If you can solve their problems in a cost effective way, then getting their business is just a matter of staying in front of their face long enough to let them know you have the answers they need.

Don’t Manage Cherries, Manage Trees!

The cherry tree is a useful sales analogy. Like a fruit tree, sales prospects must be cultivated in a certain way if they are to bear fruit. The problem is that most salespeople spend 80% of their time managing leads and trying to build relationships…managing each cherry on the tree. If the prospect doesn’t happen to be ‘ripe’ at the exact moment the sales rep makes the call, the prospect is forgotten. Goes rotten. At best, he gets the annoying monthly phone call from the salesperson that invariably says, “You ready to move on those widgets yet?”

In the MYM system, you spend your prospecting efforts on the entire tree. You provide the tree with light, water, and nutrients - and it bears fruit. You provide your entire target market of prospects with information, education and knowledge until it becomes self-evident to them that you are the only logical choice when it comes to your products or services.

By the time the prospect figures out that you are the best deal, he doesn’t really care who YOU are. He only cares what you have to offer HIM. When you finally sit down face-to-face, it will be to discuss details of the sale - not to ‘persuade’ him to do anything.

To learn more about our AMG CMS (Hopper System), or to read our hopper Best Practices Report, click here.

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Most companies don’t have a problem selling their services or products once they get an audience. If you’re a salesman who lands the appointment and can fill the prospect’s basic needs, then you’ve got a good shot at making the sale. If you’re in retail and have the leisure of customers entering your door, odds are higher that they’ll buy. Professionals who can land that initial consultation and demonstrate their product or service usually walk away with a sale - without having to compete on price alone.

If you can figure out how to do your marketing and web building the right way - so that it busts through the clutter and bridges the confidence gap - then you can easily sell your quality product at a premium price all day long…and reap huge profit margins in the process. If you’re not interested in that and you’d rather just dump stuff out there for a cheap price then go ahead and do it. Prepare to be eliminated from the business world. It’s all about the marketing.

You need to uncover what your customers want. We call this your customers’ value hierarchy or discovering the most important thing to your customers. Then build your case. Prospects want to find YOU communicating the advantages of doing business with you. Emphasize solving the customers’ problems and give them what they want. Consumers won’t care what the price is…if you can solve all their problems. Obviously, you don’t want to be so outrageously priced that you’re way off in right field.

Most business owners don’t realize that price is actually one of the lowest values on the customer value hierarchy. The problem is that because of the confusion in the marketplace, customers have an extremely difficult time distinguishing who’s who and what’s what. So when all things APPEAR to be equal, they default to price. People make assumptions based on the cases built around products.

Let’s take a glimpse at something as basic as a watch. Watches wear many price tags, depending on brand and features. There’s the Armitron, which can be found at the local Quick-E-Store. It’ll set you back about $5. Then there’s the Cherokee at Target, which costs $50. There’s the Seiko at Dillard’s for around $500. People with refined tastes may spend $10,000 for a Rolex without batting an eye.

No matter which one of these watches you’re selling, you need to build a case around that product. Tell exactly why the watch you’re selling is worth the price you’re selling it for. Explain the advantages of your product and the advantages of buying it from you. Spell it out for the consumer. Break it down for them. They love that. Explain the advantages clearly and in detail - and watch your profits go up.

Spring brings April showers, blooming flowers, and growing grass. And there’s nothing more unsightly than a lawn in need of attention. Lawn care companies will be out in mowing force ready to care for your lawn. How will you distinguish between all of them? Watch out for the ones that only say, “I’m better” or  “I’ve got the best customer service in the industry.” That doesn’t tell you anything - except they sound like everyone else.

Lawn care is usually a price-based business - most consumers chose a lawn care company by price. Here are some of the strategies we used to distinguish our lawn care client from their competition:

1) Our client put a cardboard sign in front of a local fast food restaurant that read:

Our Competitors Hired The Stupidest High School Dropout They Could Find To Mow Your Lawn with a sub-headline that read But At Smith Lawn Care Services We Don’t Do Business That Way. Also included on the sign was an offer for a FREE report and the top 10 questions to ask before you let anyone on your property.

(This article was originally published and copyrighted © by Richard Harshaw, and is re-published here with permission).

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Feeling a little out of sorts lately? Not accomplishing your life’s goals? Fatter and balder than you wish you were? Don’t worry, it’s not your fault! You can blame everything that’s wrong in your world on…. TELEVISION!

I’ve told you before that everything you know about marketing is wrong. Let’s start to clarify that statement a little bit… everything you know about marketing does not effectively allow you to accurately and succinctly portray your inside reality to the outside world. This is a product of years and decades of being conditioned to doing marketing the wrong way. Let me take you by the hand on a quick guided tour of why we’re in this situation. I think you’ll have a better appreciation for the problem itself, as well as the solution to the problem, if you have a better foundation of why the problem exists in the first place.

In the early days of advertising–the late 1800’s and early 1900’s–most companies were competing on a local or regional basis… and because of that, competition was fierce. Much of the advertising was comparative in nature. They wouldn’t just say, “Hey, we’re better.” They’d say, “We’re better, and here’s exactly why…based on this, this, this, this, and this.” On average they did a pretty good job building a case and helping prospective buyers understand the important issues in regard to their particular product or service.

This all helped to facilitate the decision making process of the prospective buyer, which is what marketing is supposed to do on a base level anyway. In other words, the ads performed a sales function. This highly competitive environment forced advertisers to use their brains when writing ads, and the beneficiary was the buyer. Back in those days, ads were thought of as an “army of tiny sales people all armed with the perfect sales presentation.” The result was that the outside perception was generally a pretty good reflection of a company’s inside reality.

All this helped, for the most part, clear up through the end of World War II. Then, everything changed. At that time, Americans had unprecedented prosperity, free time, and discretionary income. For the first time in the history of the world, the average citizen of our country said, “Hey, I’m doing pretty good. I’ve got some time, I’ve got some money, and I’m ready to CONSUME!”

Then the most significant event in the history of marketing and advertising occurred. In 1945 television was first commercially introduced ….and it changed everything. At the time, there were less than seven thousand TV sets receiving signals from just nine stations in five markets. From there, it mushroomed. By 1951, less than six years later, there were twelve million sets. One year after that, in 1952, there were twenty million sets. 

Here’s how that changed advertising…I’m talking about all advertising…even if your company doesn’t use television advertising, what you’re about to learn has directly impacted you… and in a negative way: In the 50’s, the typical family in America had one TV set that received just 3 channels… and everybody in the family sat around and watched it practically every night. Television was very influential. Some of the biggest companies in the country said, “Hey, here’s a way that we can reach everybody in the whole dad-gum country with an advertising message, and we can do it pretty cheap.”

Up until then, total national distribution of an advertising message was extremely limited to print advertising in a few magazines or in the Sears catalog. Now these advertisers could buy a TV commercial and reach literally just about every living person in the country while they were sitting around watching the boob tube, and it only cost just four thousand dollars a minute. What a bargain, even in 1950’s money! When more and more companies began to catch on to this, the prices for commercials went through the roof. Local and regional competitors quickly lost their ability to buy airtime, and soon only the largest national companies could afford the huge advertising rates, but because they were so big and already had national distribution for their products…and because of the almost instantaneous effectiveness of those advertisements, they gladly paid the money.

As advertising prices went up, the length of the average TV commercial shrank down. Instead of one or two minutes per commercial, the networks started selling them in 30 second blocks. Now here comes the key point: This meant that advertisers had less time to sell–and therefore had  less time to educate prospective consumers on the important issues and build a case as to why they were different or better or unique–so instead, they started using slogans. It started getting harder and harder for a company or product’s outside perception to accurately reflect it’s inside reality.

On a base level, what is marketing supposed to do? First, marketing has to get the prospect’s attention. Even with only 30 seconds, getting attention was still not a problem. But then what? Marketing’s next job after interruption is to facilitate the prospect’s decision-making process and make the them feel like they would have to be an absolute fool to do business with anyone else but that company… regardless of price. Companies and their ad agencies found that this was a lot harder to do with only 30 seconds. But they also found out that they didn’t really need to do it because the number of real competitors–that is, the number of competitors that could actually afford to be on the tube advertising alongside them–was amazingly, very few.

They found out that with television, because of the limited number of players, they could just spend money and win by default. Not by better products, not by having a better inside reality. Not by better advertising.  They discovered they could win by being the only one who got to the consumer on a consistent basis. It’s like winning in sports by forfeit–if the other team doesn’t show up, you automatically win! If there happened to be two or three major competitors–say like Pepsi and Coke–that was fine because there was plenty of business to divide two or three ways. The bottom line is that because of the circumstances, a company’s inside reality and outside perception didn’t have to match up; the lack of a substantial number of choices eliminated this necessity.

Can you see where this is heading, and how it affects you? Because of the reduced amount of time available, and because of the relatively few number of competitors, all of the focus shifted to  simply getting attention.  Advertising quickly lost it’s penchant for selling and developed an appetite for creativity. The idea was to get into the consumer’s brain with something creative that would stimulate them and cause them to recall the product later on when they needed it. Like I said earlier, that’s when slogans began to rule the roost. Aren’t you glad you use dial? Ring around the collar. Melts in your mouth not in your hands. How about this one: Don’t squeeze the…….. that’s right, Charmin. How do you know that? That commercial hasn’t run in almost twenty years!

The creative approach took over and soon began to filter to all other advertising media, including radio, newspaper, magazines, billboards, yellow pages, you name it. Once the creative message was in place, these big companies opened up the checkbook, spent the big bucks, and basically gave people no option but to remember the message. After 6,722 times of hearing “Plop plop, fizz, fizz,” you’re going to remember it whether you want to or not! We call this using the “C&R” Formula–C for creativity and R for repetition. Make something unusual or weird, spend a zillion dollars, and haul your dough to the bank.

So how does this work now, in today’s marketplace? Not as well as you’d probably like it to. It does still depend, to a certain extent, on how much money you have to spend. But to see it’s true effectiveness, let me give you some slogans of companies now, and you tell me if you can a) what company the slogans are for, b) what they do, and c) what you think their inside reality is. I’m betting you won’t get more than zero or one. Okay, here goes:

The Power To Know

Log in and meet

At your side

A Passion for the middle market

Instruments for professionals

Now you’re really flying

Everywhere you go

These are all slogans that were pulled out of a current major business magazine for major companies with major products or services. There has been a lot of money spent to support these campaigns and these slogans and in order to raise “awareness.”  But chances are none of them had any impact on you at all. “Now you’re really flying?” Come on, can you tell what the inside reality of that company is? No way.

Now I’m not saying you shouldn’t have a slogan. But I am saying that if it’s all you’re relying on, you’re in for trouble. Even if you do spend enough money to garner widespread awareness, there’s still no guarantee that people will know what the heck your inside reality is and feel compelled to buy something from you. There’s a big gap between what the ad agencies like to call “awareness” and what we like to call “selling something.”

Bottom line: You need to be cognizant that your ideas about advertising have been shaped by all the commercials you’ve seen from huge companies over the last 25 t0 50 years. All is not lost, however. We can still recover. The answer is Monopolize Your Marketplace.

(This article was originally published and copyrighted © by Richard Harshaw, and is re-published here with permission).

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