Marketing/Advertising Tricks And Techniques Won't Compensate For A Lack Of Confidence And Perceived Value In The Consumer's Mind

Most business owners and marketers -maybe even you--have been conditioned to try to learn little tricks and techniques... mostly because that's the only thing on the market that's being taught.

Many people mistakenly say, "Teach me the tricks of the trade." But the reality is that you need to learn THE TRADE...or in other words, the principles of successful advertising... instead of just learning the TRICKS. Once you learn the grounding principles, then you can move on to learning the techniques.

Let me give give you an example to illustrate why it is important to not just teach technique. 

Rich Harshaw relates it in this story ... "Sam and I sometimes go to McDonald's drive-thru together and get french fries. When Sam was really little, like 2 or 3, sometimes the fries would come out too hot for him to eat, so he'd ask me to cool them down. Well, how do you cool down a hot french fry when you're in the car? You hold it up to the air conditioner vent and crank it up for a few seconds until it cools off. One time I looked over and saw little Sam holding a french fry up to the a/c vent. But there were two problems--the french fry wasn't hot, and the air conditioner wasn't turned on. Sam was executing the technique to perfection--it's just that the situation was totally wrong; he couldn't understand what conditions had to exist before that technique would work.  Or in other words, he didn't understand the principles, just the technique."

And that's how it is with sales, marketing and advertising techniques.

For example, let's look at what has happened with direct mail. Back in the 70's, everyone was teaching techniques for tricking people into reading their junk mail. They teach to send your sales letter in a plain white regular-sized envelope with no return address with a first-class stamp and hand written address? People would get it and go, "Wow! A letter from someone who forgot to write their return address! I wonder who it is!" Then they'd open it. What do you do when you get a white hand-written envelope with no return address on it? You pitch it without even opening it! You know its junk. You know it's a waste of your time. But people are still using that technique--just like a 3 year old holding a cold french fry up to an a/c vent that's not even turned on! 

Here's another advertising trick; this one is used by car dealers. They're notorious for using tricks because, typically at least, they haven't innovated their business sufficiently so that they have anything "good to say." They don't have a good inside reality, so instead they try to trick you into believing they offer a better value. No, this is not the loss-leader trick, where they put a stripped-down, low-price model in their ad that lures you into the lot only to find that model doesn't exist. No, that's too obvious. Everyone knows that trick. How about this one, though? There was an ad that featured the headline, "Pay No Tax On All New Models." You look at that and instantly draw a conclusion that you won't have to pay the sales tax, which on a $25,000 vehicle could mean a savings of a couple of thousand dollars. People saw that and said, "Wow, that's a superior value...pay no tax."  If you looked closer, you saw the teeny, tiny type at the bottom of the page. It said, "Dealership will pay the INVENTORY tax on the vehicle; customer is responsible for all state and local sales taxes."

If you have bought a new car recently, you make remember seeing "Inventory Tax" on the final invoice. It was probably something like $86. Wow -- an $86 savings. Nice trick, guys.

But that's what most advertising and marketing programs teach you to do.... implement a bunch of little techniques to trick people into believing that there's some kind of value in doing business with you. Techniques, I might add, that frequently don't work when you try to use them in the real world.

You can't just rely on tricks and techniques. You've got to build the inside reality of your business so that the outside perception at least has a chance of being genuinely good.

If your inside reality is poor, or even if it's just about the same as everyone else's, what do you think the outside perception of your business will be?  It will be neutral at best. On the other hand, if you concentrate all your efforts on the "inside reality" but you can't do advertising very well, you're setting yourself up for frustration. You'll be pulling your hair out trying to figure out how anybody could be so stupid to do business with competitors when your business obviously offers a superior value.  Maybe it's NOT so obvious.

Most businesses could stand some improvement in both areas.... but they struggle the most with the "outside perception."  In other words, with all of the competition that exists--because of the Confidence Gap--they have problems differentiating themselves in the marketplace. Regardless of your situation, or where you are now, your focus should be on improving the inside reality and outside perception of your company.

If you feel like you need some help with your Inside Reality, contact us and arrange for a free 45 minute consultation

Can you see why it's imperative that these two factors be considered at the same time? Just teaching you how to innovate leaves you with a really solid company that nobody knows about. On the other hand, just teaching you sales, marketing or advertising will drive in business that won't stick around if there's no superior value.

You have to consider both the inside reality and the outside perception. You have to first have something good to say, and then say it well.