One of the most underrated marketing metrics on the plant.
One of my favorite marketing metrics that is almost never measured is who will miss you when you’re gone? Who will miss you if you don’t show up? Who will miss your email? Who will miss your video training? Who will miss your webinar? Who will miss your FB Live if you don’t hold it? Who will miss your problem-solving capabilities in-person? If you retired or otherwise went away, who would miss you in your marketplace? This is a measurement of how valued you are by others. This is a measurement of your problem solving skills. This is a measurement of your distinction. This is a measurement of your teaching style. This is a measurement of how you’re showing up and how often. This is a measurement of your marketing.
Who is changed by your actions? How do you go about that change? What many people fail to get is that marketing is about the change we seek to make. What are we looking to make better? What needs improvement? OK, so you’ve got a better product. How does it change people for the better? How do they benefit? How does it make them feel when they use it? Is it life-changing? Or, is it just incrementally better? Just because you feel it is better doesn’t mean the marketplace will feel the same way. This is the change you seek to make.
With marketing and selling, you’re moving people from point A to point B. You’re taking them to the Promised Land, which is the wonderful change you seek to bring them to enhance their lives. You can come at this change from multiple angles: expertise; support; coaching; product; how-to’s; video series; group coaching; even your own university. Note the goal of all these vehicles is to affect change in your customer. They have a desire or a hurt, and they’re looking to get it fulfilled or relieved, respectively. You seek to move people in a positive direction. How will you choose to do this? How does the customer want you to move them? You do this by providing them answers, expertise and the support to get there.
What does the customer want? What does the prospect want? They don’t want your product. Not really. What they want is the benefit that your product brings to their lives. What they want is what’s in it for them by using your product, by being seen using your product. That’s what they want. They want the status boost. They want to feel better about themselves. They want relief from pain. They want their families to love them more. They want to be perceived as an excellent provider. They want to make more money not necessarily for its own sake, but for what it can do for them and those they love. They want the effect, the feeling. This is why the statement, “Imagine what your life will be like when you’re finally …[free from an undesired result or condition]” works so well. People want positive change in their lives. They dream of it. How will your stuff help them fulfill their dreams?
If we drill-down using the 5 Whys, we come to realize that most of us want the same things: respect, love, peace, fulfillment, esteem, status. It turns out that our desires are not that different after all. In fact, they’re quite similar. We want what we want: universal desires. We feel we can get there through the things we desire or aspire to buy or to have: big house; fancy car; cool vacations; jet-set lifestyle; big, fancy job; early retirement. All of these are a means or vehicle to the aforementioned human desires. This is how we’re driven, even unconsciously. So, what does this mean? It means we buy things to feel certain ways. We buy because of how it makes us feel. Using logic to market and sell your product is not what will make the prospect purchase. Appealing to the emotions surrounding your product and the emotions your product or brand evokes is what will make the prospect purchase. So many have said it before but it is worth stating again: people buy emotionally and justify logically thereafter. We are all emotional buyers.
