What Is Your Trail of Bread Crumbs?

A few years ago I was asked to teach a class on marketing strategies for a group of unemployed job seekers. As I thought of how I could best help this group of highly qualified, but very depressed executive level people, I came up with the following strategy that will also help you market your business.

The first question I posed to the group was this: "What problems are you VERY good at solving?"

This is a tough question and it took the individuals in my class a lot of hard thinking to come up with a thorough answer. What I was trying to get them to do was to look at their job skills in terms of problem solving, rather than experience. Anyone who is skilled at a job has mastered a set of problems he or she is very good at solving.

The same thing applies to your company. Really, really put your mind to coming up with a focused list of specific problems your business is VERY good at solving for your customers. I want you to think of some poor manager's list of performance goals his boss has handed him to accomplish, or else. Don't stop thinking until you can define these problems in almost the same kind of wording that will appear on this poor manager's performance evaluation next quarter.

This process will force you to look at what your business does from the inside out. Not from the view of an insider looking out at all the possible customers out there, but as an outsider who has a problem and is looking for some outfit that can hand them a solution on a silver platter.

Once you have reduced everything you and your team do to a very short list of problems you are very good at solving, then your marketing merely becomes a matter of helping that problem-plagued manager (and others like hime) find you.

Yes, I really did say, "merely" and I was totally serious.

Here's why. When anyone has a significant problem that causes pain, loss of sleep, stress and all kinds of other unpleasantness, THAT PERSON IS LOOKING FOR A SOLUTION.

For example, I am very good at ghost writing articles for the business person who cannot, or is too busy, to write them for herself. Oh, she knows she could really enhance her reputation and marketability if she could write and publish a number of articles related to her fields.

But since these this individual cannot write these articles for herself, she is looking for a solution to this problem. I am the solution and she is looking for me.

In your business, it is important to understand that there are people out there in your marketplace looking for you right now. They don't know your name or phone number, but they are looking for the solutions you can deliver to them.

So all your marketing efforts from now on, must be directed toward helping these people find you. Lay your trail of bread crumbs with every marketing step you take and make sure the trail leads right to your front door. They will find you.

COPYRIGHT (C) 2005, Charles Brown

Writing The Before & After Formula

The Before and After Scenario is one of the oldest, and best, methods used by advertisers and copywriters. And why not? It works because it paints a vivid portrait for your prospect of how he can realize a major change in his life.

A “Before-Scenario” depicts a person whose circumstances are much like that of your targeted prospect: overweight, broke, stuck in a dead-end job, bald or what have you. This is a person your targeted prospect can identify with because he or she languishes under the very same circumstances.

Then you present an “After-Scenario” depicting one of your satisfied customers who is delighted with the changes your product or service has brought about. She is now fit and trim (and has the requisite bathing suit pictures to prove it), they now has enough money to live the life they always dreamed about, or he now has a full head of hair and is irresistible to the opposite sex.

The simple truth is that now matter how familiar we are with this kind of advertising, it still works because the targeted prospect identifies with your Before-Scenario and strongly wants to escape from those circumstances. And the After-Scenario offers the prospect the very life he or she wants to escape to.

But at times the very familiarity of this formula may simply get old in your market. Nevertheless, there are a few ways to get even more mileage out of this old advertising workhorse by adding a few twists:

1. Create A “Virtual” After-Scenario Sometimes you may not want to use a real person’s situation, but want your reader to visualize his or her own Before and After Scenario.
   
   You do this by injecting a lot of emotion into the problem your product or service is designed to solve.
   
   Suppose your company provides auto financing for people with poor credit. You could create a Before-Scenario by vividly describing the embarrassment of driving an old, dilapidated car. Remind the prospect of the constant fear of driving a car that could break down on a remote highway late at night or on a busy highway in the middle of rush hour traffic. You could also, stir up the humiliation of being turned down for financing from traditional lenders.
   
   Then you paint a second, emotional-filled scene of your prospect driving an attractive, dependable car, after being treated with dignity and respect by your finance officers. Paint an emotional picture of your prospect being seen by friends and neighbors driving this nice looking, late model car and having the peace of mind that the monthly payments are reasonable and that the car is in very good working order.
   
   
2. Depict a Negative After Scenario. Sometimes you have to educate your prospect about why buying your competitors’ cheaper product is more costly in the long run. Here is an example, written by Dan Kennedy, to sell an ordinary product like shoes:
   

   …but if you insist on just wearing any old pair of ordinary shoes, here’s what you have to look forward to in your so-called golden years; fallen arches…intense lower back pain…even pain from just walking around a shopping mall! You’ll be asking your friends to slow down so you can keep up. You’ll be futilely soaking your feet at night like some old fuddy-duddy. You may even need pain pills just to get to sleep.

   
   With a Negative After-Scenario, you are projecting an undesirable future resulting from your prospect’s shortsighted attempt to save a little money now by buying an inferior product, or by not spending any money at all to solve a known problem while there is still time.
   
   
3. A Back-Story Scenario. This Before and After formula is not seen by your reader, but is sketched out for you the writer and marketer. Even if I am writing copy that follows a different format, I will often write out a before and after comparison for my own use when I begin my work. This enables me to clearly see the benefits the prospects are seeking in the form of specific changes they want to experience in their lives.
   
   I want to know what the prospect is dissatisfied with now, and how intensely that dissatisfaction feels. I also want to know how the prospect wants to feel in the future and what changes must take place in order to achieve that desired state and the emotions that will come with it.
   
   Let’s face it, I don’t want to overlook a single benefit that my readers might be seeking. And without my own draft version of a before-after sketch, I might miss the very benefit that will trigger the most response.
   
   

Every worthwhile product or service helps to bring about a desired change. And let’s face it, all of us, regardless of what we sell, are really in the business of selling change. A person who is satisfied with the status quo is not a prospect, and will never be a customer.

But when that person is ready for a change, and has become dissatisfied with the way things are right now, a strong Before and After Scenario can show them the way to find that change.

COPYRIGHT © 2005, Charles Brown

Cure For Boring Corporate Communications

Roger was in a state of near panic. He had come out of his office to investigate the cacophony of unanswered telephones ringing throughout the office, and had been met with a horrible sight. Everywhere he looked, he saw his employees slumped over their desks asleep or staring off into space, as if they had suddenly been struck comatose.

Not a single employee in his entire department appeared to be conscious, and all the while the ringing telephones continued unanswered.

Had some deadly virus suddenly struck his entire staff? Had a toxic gas come through the office ventilation system?

Roger had no idea what could be causing this horror, but he knew that he had to call 911 fast. As he rushed back to his office he saw his secretary slumped over her desk, drooling into her keyboard. Suddenly he saw what she was holding in her almost-lifeless fingers.

It wasn’t a disease. It wasn’t a toxic gas that was causing all his people to fall into this stupor. It was something far, far worse.

Today was the day the corporation’s internal company newsletter had been distributed to each employee.

There is no law that says internal corporate communications must be boring

But you would almost think so wouldn’t you? As you look through a lot of internal newsletters and other corporate communications pieces, it almost seems some writers are afraid they will wind up doing hard time with an overly-tattooed cellmate named Bruno, if they anything out of the ordinary appears in their writing.

Not true.

I think the problem comes from attempting to apply traditional journalistic methods within the confined context of an internal communication. Straight news reporting is fine if you have a steady flow of really dramatic stories like the grandmother who foiled a home invader, the latest national security crises, or a winning professional sports team as material.

But if your subject matter is confined to the happenings within a specific company or industry, you may not have all that drama to rely on traditional journalistic methods. You may have to add a dose of creativity.

Use Good Speechwriters’ Methods

A speechwriter, trainer, presenter or any other type of speaker has a very similar problem as a corporate communications writer. How to convey a lot of factual information and ideas, without putting the audience to sleep. Here are a few techniques used by speakers to balance factual content with style and (dare I use the word) “entertainment.”

• Humor. Humor can be dangerous in advertising or external communications, but generally, depending on your corporate culture, you may have more freedom to use humor internally. It goes without saying that humor can backfire on you in many ways if you are not careful, so use good judgment and get a second opinion before going to print. Keep a humor file of amusing anecdotes, cartoons and photos that you can secure the rights to publish. Also, be on the lookout for the truly funny human beings that populate your workplace. Stories about these funny coworkers will do double duty as a humor piece and as an article where employees can read about one of their own. You can also solicit funny captions for photos and other ideas from the readers. Let your employees write your humor pieces for you.
  
• Second Person When a speaker or writer addresses the listener or reader in the second person, she involvesher audience. But even more, the second person writing process almost forces her to dig for ways to personalize her message and address the concerns and needs of her audience in every way she can think of. Notice that after my introduction about Roger, I have used the second person to present all of my information, ideas and opinions since. Because I am not writing to a nameless “readership,” but to you, as an individual, and my mind is forcing me to explore ways to write about what you want to learn. Try second person writing on your corporate communications writing and see how it affects your creative process, as well as your readers’ involvement.
  
• Stories A study of Readers’ Digest magazine revealed that over half of its articles begin with a story, anecdote or narrative of some kind. Surveys of audiences have repeatedly concluded that speakers who scatter stories and anecdotes and stories throughout their presentations hold their hearers’ attentions far better than speakers who bury them under a truckload of facts and information. I made up the story about Roger because I wanted a way to illustrate the difficulty internal newsletter writers have in communicating their messages in an interesting manner. Stories not only hold your readers’ fascination, they also convey your point with great power. Create your story by simply asking “what if” about the major problem you wish to address.
  
• Turn Numbers Into Vivid Images By its very nature, internal communications within an organization tends to be heavy on the statistics, earnings reports and other number-oriented material. But there are still ways to present your numbers without having your readers go into a stupor. Illustrate numbers with examples. If one employee out of 100 takes advantage of the company's tuition assistance program, interview that employee and tell her story. If the company lost $163,199 last quarter because of employee absenteeism, show how many new employees could have been hired for that amount to ease everyone's workload.
  

This is just a brief list of ideas, but I will revisit this idea again in the future. In the meantime, I would encourage you to adopt the methods used by speakers and trainers to involve their audiences more. You will find a wealth of ideas that can easily be adapted to your internal corporate communications. In the meantime, please help Roger wake up his employees.
COPYRIGHT © 2005, Charles H. Brown

3 Lessons From A Marketing Superstar

I was just rereading Jeffrey J. Fox’s marvelous book, How To Become A Marketing Superstar this week, and had to start jotting down some notes to pass along. Fox has a wonderful knack for distilling his hard-won wisdom into two or three page chapter nuggets that others would have to teach an entire college semester to get across.
Here are a few of my favorites:

• NEVER USE WE. Eliminate the personal pronouns “I,” “me,” “we,” “us,” or “our” in advertising, packaging, sales literature or anywhere else in marketing communications. “We” is about the marketer and its story. “We” is in the first person. “We” is a bad proxy for your brand name or company name. Your job is to draw the customer into the conversation by focusing on her and her story, her concerns, her headaches, her wants. Your job is to build brand awareness, not “we’ awareness…Never use “we,” “us,” or “our” in the headline. The advertisement is not about you, it is not about your success or experience or hard work. It is about the customer and what the product will do for her or him. To confound this sin, these same advertisers often follow their ”we” with trite clichés like, “We put customers first,” or, “We are committed to excellence.”
  
• SELL CONSEQUENCES. Always communicate the consequences to the customer of going without your product…It is always more effective to influence the customer by showing the cost, damage or loss they incurring right now by going without your product. Few customers knowingly ignore consequences and then deliberately buy an alternative product on the basis of a lower price alone.…What is it costing your prospect right now to not be doing business with you each month? What other consequences will occur if she delays taking action right now?
  
• DIFFERENCES. If you flip through any small stack of magazines you will quickly find many examples of ads that inform of such things as “our people make the difference,” or “little details make all the difference,” “feel the difference,” or even, “the right choice makes all the difference.” These are all signs of lazy marketers who have not taken the effort to think through what makes their product “different.” And yet it is these differences that are your selling points and even your competitive edges (or are they just "wishful differences” with your competitor having the real competitive edge.) If the marketer is too lazy to think through the differences and articulate them, how can he expect the customer to do it for him? If you can’t illustrate to the customer why your widget is different and better than the Brand X widget, he will either choose based upon price, or by what his cousin Ernie thinks he once heard someone say about your brand).
  

If you haven’t read How To Become A Marketing Superstar yet, go pick up a copy. I’d loan you mine, but I’m still rereading it.

COPYRIGHT © 2005, Charles H. Brown