Compelling versus convincing

compelling, education, education, Marketing

The appreciation of the difference in the words Compelling & Convincing, and its implications in marketing was made possible due to Dean Jackson. I would highly recommend his podcasts Morecheeselesswhiskers.com and his podcast with Joe Polish, Ilovemarketing.com.

Whenever you place an argument in front of a person, even with all the data in the world and show them a conclusion, they will be resistive to it. If the conclusion is not drawn by the person herself, she will always try to find the “catch”. What is it that she’s missing.

On the other hand if you educate a person and logically lead them on a path, then the conclusion that they draw is their own and then they are compelled to look at you.

Look at Apple. They have well designed products no doubt. But look at the closed hierarchy of systems they have created. Every few months they have some global launch in which they showcase how the integration between their products and the newer technologies they are launching will make your life even more comfortable.

Till about 4 -5 years back we didn’t have a single Apple device, we now have 8. And my family members wait when a new item is getting launched. Apple does not try to convince them to buy, but they have got so strongly hooked into the Apple ecosystem, they will give you all the reasons why you should not buy anything else.

A person who is compelled to take action will be your customer for a long time because she has taken the decision based on the education you have given her.

So instead of trying to convince people to your point of view, give them the tools by educating them and compel them to take an informed decision.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem

Marketing is Education- Part 2

Breathing, education, Health, Marketing, Yoga

Today I will give you examples of how different people / companies have used education to create a massive amount of marketing pull for their companies.

Example 1 : Joe Polish , Dean Jackson , Dan Sullivan. Between the three of them they run 4-5 podcasts. Ilovemarketing.com, morecheeselesswhiskers.com, 10Xtalk.com, Cloudlandia etc.

The amount of knowledge they give in these podcasts and related YouTube videos is so amazing. I have utilized so much of that knowledge and because I saw their knowledge working for me, I also started buying some of their products .

Example 2: Baba Ramdev is a Yoga and Ayurveda guru in India . Ayurveda is the more than 7000 year science of using plants and herbs to heal the body. Using Yoga and Ayurveda Ramdev baba teaches how you can live a healthy life.

Whenever possible I watch his videos on YouTube and television channels like IndiaTV. Through these I have learnt so many breathing exercises to keep me alert and healthy as well as about plants and herbs that can keep me healthy.

Patanjali is the company which sells Ayurveda products which is associated with Baba Ramdev and he does show some of those products in passing.

But what do you think comes to my mind first when I have to buy AloeVera juice. You got it Patanjali. Simply because the other companies didn’t teach me the advantages of using AloeVera first, I always prefer Patanjali . Like me there are millions of people who have today made Patanjali a company with revenues of more than USD 2 Billion.

Tomorrow I will pick up some more examples from different fields where education has helped increase the business.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

B2B Messaging- Part II

differentiation, Marketing, messaging, Positioning, Product Management, Sales, segmentation, Uncategorized

Yesterday we spoke about the challenges when sending an email to a prospects.

Unlike consumer products,where you can build a large list of prospects with opt-ins, when you are starting off something new, you also have to buy lists. You have to send them cold emails.

As I have mentioned earlier also its always better to go to existing customers first with your new offerings or you should go to your partners’ customers with your new offerings.

Howevr whe you are working for a company, the pressure for getting more and more prospects into your funnel is very high and therefore sending cold emails becomes imperative.

Mind you, there are other media as well, like Linkedin which you can use. There’s however a price to be paid.

If you are starting out a new company or a new division of a company or starting as the new marketing head, then getting funding can be tough since any Paid advertising or SEO takes time to get you actual leads and a lot of companies may not have that kind of patience for giving you funding

So if you are in that kind of a situation email is the only medium which you can use.

But as we mentioned yesterday, the email has to pass through so many filters before it even reaches the recipient. After it reaches her mailbox, it only has a fraction of a second before she either deletes the mail or just ignores it.

Which means the message has to be so focused, simple and should not in any way even remotely look salesy. So all the fancy home emails are out.

On a mobile where the screen real estate is so small you cannot waste it on showing graphics.

The message has to be pure text and should look like it has been only written for her – the recipient. As Dean Jackson says it should be all cheese (only the customer’s interest) no whiskers (our interest)

Till next time..

Carpe Diem!!!.

Creating the message for your niche

differentiation, Marketing, messaging, Positioning, Product Management, Sales, segmentation

While finding the niche is tough, I have found creating the messaging to make people raise their hand to show interest is the toughest part

This requires immense attention to the nuances of the words being used. You need to keep chiseling on the words such that you use the least amount of words with the highest impact.

But even before you get down to putting words on paper, how do you make out ” what’s going on in the customer’s mind”

The famous Clayton Christensen experiment on the job of the milkshake was directed to exactly figure out what’s going on in the minds of people who buy a milkshake in the morning at McDonald’s.

You will need to test hypothesis and have the patience to continuously iterate and improve on what’s working and dump what’s not.

Somethings which I have found very useful are ideas from Jay Abraham and Dean Jackson. I would highly recommend reading Jay’s book Getting All you want from What you Have and listening to the MoreCheeseLessWhiskers podcast by Dean.

Once you know the usage, which we discussed in the last 2 posts, you can start making some hypothesis by getting into the shoes of the customers.

In the dry cleaning example that I used yesterday…maybe you could think if they are a single parent doing multiple jobs or they could be a family with both parents working….each could have a different challenge

In the case of the Disaster Recovery example which was a B2B case, maybe the customer has their own DR site is now looking for a different kind of a DR…they would think in terms of the different types of technologies available, feasibility etc. While someone who is going for a DR execution for the first time could be more interested in where do I start from.

Like I said earlier, this is one of the toughest jobs because you have to be creative in conceptualizing and building the message but you have to be scientific in measuring and testing your different messages.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!