Small Business Marketing Sucks

You’ve probably heard the saying, “It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.” As a telemarketing manager, it used to baffle me how two telemarketers could deliver the exact same pitch and yet one would set five times more appointments than the other. I’ve come to believe that how we say it is at least as important as what we say.

The reason for this lies in the physiology of the brain, so here’s some Science 101. But don’t worry… I’ll keep it simple.

Your brain is made up of many parts, but for our purposes, I’m only going to talk about two. The first is the outer portion, or the neocortex.

The neocortex is our “Thinking Brain.” It’s primarily responsible for things like:

• Rational thought, Logic and Language
• Reasoning and Problem solving
• Judgment and Impulse control

The other portion is the limbic brain. This is our “Feeling Brain.” The limbic brain is the first part of our brain to react to anything we see, hear, feel, etc. In other words, the first response we have to any situation or event in an emotional one… because all sensory input hits the limbic brain before the neocortex. This means we feel before we think.

Now that you know a thing or two about the brain, which part do you suppose controls decision-making?

Is that your final answer?

If you picked the limbic “feeling brain,” then you answered correctly.

Does it surprise you that the feeling brain is what drives decision-making rather then the thinking brain? It doesn’t if you’re in sales, because you’re probably familiar with this well-know quote:

“People usually buy on emotion and then they justify it with logic.”

- Zig Ziglar

Science is now confirming what salespeople have known for years – and the physiology of the brain explains why it is so.

This means that, as sales people, business owners and marketers, if we want to persuade and influence others’ decisions, we must communicate to the feeling portion of the brain more than the thinking portion. It’s not that people don’t want logic, facts and figures when making decisions – they do. It’s just that logic doesn’t drive behavior and cause people to take action… emotions do.

Need more proof? Let me channel Cliff Clavin for a moment. The word emotion comes from the Latin word emovere. Here’s a word picture:

emovere

It’s also where we get the word motivation. The bottom line is, we don’t move or make any decision unless our emotions are involved.

So what does this have to do with using your voice more effectively? Well, everything… because the limbic “feeling brain” also processes vocal intonations or “tone of voice.” This means that your tone of voice is the direct link to the “emotional mixing board” in another person’s brain. Your tone of voice has a huge impact on the other person’s emotional response – for better or for worse…

I just read an interesting analysis [pdf] of the “Get a Mac” ad campaign... you know, the ones with the nerdy businessman (“I’m a PC”) and the cool hipster (“I’m a Mac”) politely bantering about which is superior.

The long-running commercials have won advertising awards, been praised by Mac users, denegrated by PC loyalists, and parodied numerous times on sites like YouTube. There's even a website where you can watch all 60+ commercials.

But the ultimate success of any advertising campaign is, How much did it affect sales? Here are the results:

• 2006: Apple’s overall sales rose 39 percent for the fiscal year. (That rise began shortly after the first commercials began to air.)
• 2007: Apple reported 34 percent growth in Mac sales from 4Q 2006.
• 2008: Apple saw 38 percent growth in Mac sales from the previous year.

So what can the average business owner take away from Apple’s success? There are many factors that make a campaign successful, but here are three key components to consider in all your advertising:

Know Who Your Target Audience Is

Apple knew their intended audience... and it wasn’t the staunch PC user. (In fact, most of the backlash over the campaign came from this camp.) No, their target audience was the “swing” consumer who was not entrenched in either camp. These may have been people who didn’t actively choose a PC over a Mac, rather, those who bought a PC because they didn’t know what else to get.

Facts Tell, But Emotions Sell

Apple clearly understands that facts, features (or even benefits) don’t sell... emotions do. The report noted that, if you were to distill the central theme that runs across the entire campaign, it would be:

...PCs cause trouble and grief — they’re hard to use, they’re unstable, and they’re vulnerable to malware. Macs are easy, stable, safe, and competent. Your computer problems will go away when you switch to Mac.

Words like trouble, grief, hard, easy, stable, safe and competent are all emotional; and even though the commercials didn’t directly say these things, they were certainly the message they intended to convey.

Marketing Matters!

You can reap the benefits of advertising, or suffer the consequences of not. Apple has done both.

What prompted the “Get a Mac” campaign was, in spite of consistent growth since 2001, Mac sales went south in late ‘05. In May ‘06, Apple launched the “Get a Mac” campaign. In June, sales began their upward spike. Coincidence? I think not.

You may have noticed that I didn’t post Apple’s results for 2009. In September ‘08, Microsoft launched their “I’m a PC” commercials, and shortly thereafter, Apple’s “Get a Mac” ads largely disappeared. In early ‘09, Apple’s double-digit growth in Mac sales took a sharp decline. Coincidence? Again, I think not.

Blogging on this same topic,eWeek’s Microsoft Watch summed it up nicely:

What have I been saying for months? Marketing matters. People buy products that they see advertised. Their awareness increases, as does potential emotional connection to a brand and/or product. During the worst days of Windows Vista sales, Microsoft did no marketing. But since September, Microsoft has consistently advertised Windows and supporting software, like Windows Live Photo Gallery.

The bottom line: regardless of what advertising medium you employ, all the key ingredients must be included in order to succeed.

Apple has offically announced that it’s ending the “Get a Mac” campaign but considering it’s overall success at embedding itself into pop culture, I’m sure its legacy will continue. With that thought, I’ll close with one of my favorites:

Sales and marketing gurus are always talking about value — that in order to have a successful product or service, we must “create value” for the customer. But what exactly does that mean?

While the theory is absolutely correct, the concept of value is subjective and nebulous. What is valuable to one person may be completely irrelevant to another.

And to complicate things even more, we tend to be myopic about what we think is valuable about our product or service. It’s like trying to read the label from inside the bottle... what we think is valuable and ought to cause consumers to buy is often not the case. So it would seem that determining what’s valuable to your customer is not as easy as it sounds.

Here’s a simple definition:

If you are increasing or decreasing something that your customer wants increased or decreased, then you are creating value.

So... what value are you creating today?

In this video, marketing consultant/author Simon Sinek gives a great presentation based, in part, on his book, Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action. Whether you’re a salesperson, business owner, marketer or entrepreneur, there’s something for everyone here.

Any good salesperson worth his salt knows that no one buys anything on the basis of a product’s features, that to communicate value you must translate the feature into a benefit.

“Features versus benefits” is Marketing 101. Yet, even if you master the basic skill of effectively translating features into benefits, you’ll may still fail in the final and most crucial step of the buying process – triggering the need or desire that causes your prospect to act.

You see, it’s not the benefit per se that motivates a person to buy. It’s power-packed words describing those benefits that trigger the emotions which motivate us to spend our money, time or energy. In other words, people buy because of the emotions associated with the benefits, not the benefits themselves.

Let me give you an actual example. Recently, my oldest son’s Boy Scout troop did its annual popcorn sales fundraiser. We set up (with permission) in front of a local gas station/mini-mart and arranged two-hour shifts of two scouts each. When our turn came, I instructed the boys on some basic etiquette (“Stand up straight,” “Allow people to enter the mini-mart; don’t block their path,” “Speak firmly but politely,” etc.)

Forgetting who I was for a time and what I do for a living (hey, it was the weekend), I didn’t pay much attention to the boys’ canned pitch (“would you like to buy some Boy Scout popcorn?”) to which most people politely replied, “no thanks,” or sometimes even rudely ignored them.

It wasn’t until one customer asked, “What’s this for?” to which the boys replied, “It’s for the Boy Scouts!” that my sales-trainer radar finally engaged. After telling the woman that they were raising money for a trip to Gettysburg, I took the boys aside and presented a new approach. I instructed the boys to say the following:

“Would you like to buy some popcorn to help us earn money for a trip to Gettysburg?”

You see, their original pitch did not address prospective popcorn-buyers’ unasked question: “What’s in it for me?” The additional “help us earn money for a trip to Gettysburg” provided something beyond the (questionable) benefit of over-priced, average-tasting popcorn. It triggered a desire that caused people to act. In other words, it provided a buying motivation: a desire to help the Boy Scouts. Buying the popcorn satisfied that desire with the good feelings everyone got from helping a worthwhile cause.

The result? Over the next 45 minutes, until our shift was over, every single person that walked by either bought popcorn or gave a donation towards the trip. In the words of the boys after their first sale using the new approach: “It works!”