Breaking With Marketing Conventions for Maximum Success
As per a saying attributed to Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel, the opposite of love is not hate but indifference. Businesses that refuse to take risks with their marketing suffer the consequences of leaving consumers coldly indifferent.
Why is this so bad for a business?
Indifferent brands stagnate while even companies that generate foaming-at-the-mouth haters manage to polarize the marketplace and achieve extremely loyal fans. Think of a top company that you absolutely despise and you will immediately know this to be true.
While the point of marketing isn't to repel audiences, the act of creating a compelling story should be the underpinning of your sales funnel. Achieving success for your business can only occur when you master your fears and insecurities by stepping out of your comfort zone.
How Strong Is Your Brand Voice?
A brand voice that follows a formulaic story arc is destined to spin its tires in the marshes of mediocrity. Business owners often choose to follow the hero's journey, as described by Joseph Campbell, when coming up with their brand's story.
"The founders faced some insurmountable adversity at some point but they managed to pull through."
These businesses make the mistake of presenting something trite about their 'grit' or 'tenacity.'
And people don't care.
A strong brand story should never state the obvious. Consumers are used to this kind of storytelling and don't respond well to unoriginal, condescending approaches. They've seen it all before and they know there's a happy ending right before the credits roll.
Your brand voice is your brand's personality. It's the unique way you announce your presence in the market and it's the way your business carries itself. An exceptional brand voice stems from an exceptional story.
Be Profound, Not Cliché
One of the common tropes businesses use in conveying their story is that of the unlikely hero. Bio artist Caroline Mays explains that "The story is the container for your profound, poignant ideas." She goes on to present a rhetorical question: "What are the success stories of beautiful, profound, and heinous ideas?"
No matter how traumatic you think your story is, you can tell it compellingly. Connecting your story to your business is the key to achieving massive success for your brand through engaging consumers on a deep, subconscious level.
Valuing Qualitative Over Quantitative
A second area where breaking with marketing conventions can yield explosive results is in challenging the idea of data-driven decision-making. Tim Ash, an acknowledged authority on evolutionary psychology and digital marketing, notes that too much of what actually influences conversions lies in areas that are uncharted by data measurement. The fact that business owners limit themselves to making decisions exclusively based on things they can validate through split-testing leaves a world of intangible factors to be exploited by brands that think out of the box.
Ash recalls an example from his experience consulting a client that sells high-ticket items. This client had very knowledgeable customer service to support the complex, expensive products the company sells. After training the call center representatives in selling, phone sales exploded by 15% while the company's website performance remained steady.
The takeaway is that while there was no data to support leveraging the customer service team to do sales, taking a qualitative approach lead to an important realization: One of the most powerful assets at the company's disposal, its call center, could offer valuable synergies to conversions.
Drive Consumers Away From Pain and Into Your Sales Funnel
Framing is critical to your success. Marketers often get it wrong by speaking in 'happy talk,' as Tim Ash refers to it. Creating a blissful image of your product or service is holding you back. It's meaningless.
Customers move away from pain more than they move towards pleasure. Focusing on the pain points your audience is experiencing and drilling home the inconveniences of their condition will make them appreciate the solution you have to offer exponentially more.
Overcoming Inertia
With human brains consuming 25% of the body's overall energy, the a priori state is to do nothing. If your brain had its way, you would sit around on the couch until someone came along to feed you. Fortunately, there are plenty of threats, needs, and stimuli that cause people to take action.
To get consumers to notice your marketing message, you need to take your audience out of its comfort zone. This can only be done by proving to people that not buying your product will end up prolonging their pain. The best way to achieve this goal is to make the implication of their inaction clear in a way that disrupts their default state of inertia.
The example Tim Ash gives is that of teeth whitening. Ash recommends rubbing salt in the audience's wound, metaphorically speaking. With most providers of tooth whitening choosing to focus on the resulting bright smile, Ash suggests leaning into a punch to the audience's face, so to speak. Highlighting the miserable existence one lives as a result of having yellow teeth will provoke a potent response.
"Do you close your mouth instead of smiling because of your yellow teeth? Do you have trouble getting a date? Afraid of dying alone?"
Learned responses, such as the triggering of the desire to make a purchase, are tied to memories and the value people place on past events. More importantly, humans cannot make a decision without an emotional or instinctual component. Present the pain point in a way that hits home with consumers, offer your solution, and be sure to close with a powerful call to action.
Break With Conventional Marketing Thought
The global business landscape is more competitive than ever. Attempting to surpass the other market players with the same tools and mindset they use will predictably leave you at a disadvantage. Reach into your brand's soul and pull out the essence as it pertains to your customer. Take a look at the space between your data points. Rethink the importance you place on the qualitative aspects of your brand and don't shy away from taking the risks that will set your business apart.