Marketing Secrets the BIG BRANDS Don’t Want You to Know About
When Apple started selling the iPod there were plenty of competitors also selling MP3 players. The iPod wasn’t the first or arguably even the best MP3 player.
And while the competitors kept talking about how many gigabytes of storage their MP3 player had, or the screen size or some other technical jargon that no one really cared about or understood.
Apple came up with a genius slogan that focuses on the customer and uses the secrets that the BIG BRANDS use to get an edge on the competition:
Their slogan was: “1000 songs in your pocket”
People don’t understand how much 5GB of storage gives you, but they understand if they are told they can have 1000 songs on a device that they can put in their pocket and listen to on their headphones!
In this article I will be talking about the marketing secrets the BIG BRANDS don’t want you to know about, how you can craft a message as genius as 1000 songs in your pocket and then I’ll give you some action steps near the end of the article, so you can start implementing these secrets and take your marketing to the next level today!
The Marketing Secrets
Having run a marketing agency for the past 4 years, where mostly, all I think about is marketing, I’ve picked up the most powerful marketing secrets out there that the most successful companies use!
So the secrets I will be telling you about today are:
- The balance between long-term sales growth vs short-term sales uplifts.
- Sell a ******* and tap into the customers emotions.
- How you can craft a very powerful message like Apple in your advertisements that resonates so well with the customer that they have no other choice but to buy your product — using the WWW method.
- And one last step that will make you look at marketing very differently from now on, so make sure you stick to the end so you can start using these secrets in your business today!
SECRET #1: Long-term sales growth vs short-term sales uplifts
On this graph you can see the yellow line represents the short-term sales uplifts or sales activation and that is when you focus on short-term selling and all you are trying to do is sell as quickly as possible and the orange line represents the long-term sales growth of a company or brand building, and there you don’t really care if the sales from those efforts come today, tomorrow or 10 years from now, because your focus is on building the brand of the business!
If this is hard to understand I’ll give you some examples of each in a minute, but a lot of businesses focus too much just on the yellow line, short term sales, and it is totally understandable because often businesses need sales to survive the month.
This is, however, no long term strategy and will keep your business in the rat race.
But you can’t focus too much on brand building either because you have to pay the bills.
The balance between brand building and sales activation ⚖️
Just like the big brands have to reach their sales quota for each quarter, small and medium sized businesses have to pay the bills and also need sales to keep growing.
So I recommend using 50% of your time, resources and marketing budget into long-term sales growth and the other 50% into sales activation!
This way you can pay the bills and keep the company profitable from month to month AND you are creating a strong brand for the long term.
Some examples of long-term sales growth or brand building are for example creating a great logo and brand book, updating your website to make it look better and increasing the conversion rate, doing a mass marketing campaign that connects with the customer long term, building an email list, ranking higher on SEO and more.
Some examples of short-term sales uplifts or sales activation are for example short term marketing promotions, using targeted marketing through social media campaigns, discounts, cold calls, selling to your email list and more.
SECRET #2: Sell a FEELING 😃
If you have any experience with marketing you’ve probably heard the phrase “Sell benefits, not features” but I urge you to take it a step further, where you sell a feeling.
Let’s do an example:
You are selling noise canceling headphones.
The feature would be that it is noise cancelling.
The benefit would be that you can listen to the music without interruption.
The feeling would be a person drawing something, completely in the zone, uninterrupted and FEELING a sense of calmness.
Selling a feeling should be done through images and videos.
Coca Cola is very good at this where they sell a feeling, which keeps Coca Cola top of mind and makes people want to buy a coke more often.
This way, when you see a Coke bottle in the store your subconscious mind remembers the feeling Coca Cola was selling you in the ad which makes you NEED to buy that coke!
Of course Coca Cola is unique in the way that they advertise, and Apple, for example advertises differently, but you have to be able to tap into some kind of feeling.
So think about your product or service and ask yourself: “When people use my product what do they feel? Or what do I want them to feel?”
Describe the scenario they’re in and the strongest feeling and then start brainstorming how you can invoke that feeling with your marketing material.
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SECRET #3: Craft a marketing message with the WWW method
Like I talked about in the beginning of this article, when Apple started marketing their iPod they came up with a genius slogan that focuses on the customer and resonated so well with them that they just had to buy the iPod instead of some other MP3 player.
But how can you craft a message like Apple did with the iPod?
You use the WWW method.
So the WWW method works like this:
You ask yourself 3 simple questions:
- Who is our customer?
- What are we selling?
- Why should they buy it?
When you’ve answered those 3 simple questions you can start crafting your marketing message!
So let’s pretend we are Apple, we’re selling the iPod and we ask ourselves those 3 questions:
Who is our customer?
It’s too simple to say everyone so we need to dig a little deeper, and we come up with: People who love listening to music and want to be able to listen to it everywhere they go.
What are we selling?
We are selling an MP3 player but what is the “FEELING” we are selling? We are selling a device that you can carry around in your POCKET that enables you to listen to your favorite music wherever you go and it makes you feel good.
Why should they buy it?
Because it can store 1000s of songs and you can listen to them wherever you go.
So after we’ve answered the 3 questions we can put the answers together and come up with: “1000 songs in your pocket”
If you like this article, make sure you check out my YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxM6MNKsb991PgfbzxS8Orw/videos
SECRET #4: EVERYTHING You Do is Marketing
The final secret is that everything you or your company does is an opportunity to market your company. Every time a customer opens their order from you, every time someone from your company speaks to a client, through phone, email or live chat or whatever.
Marketing isn’t just creating the best campaign for the Super Bowl or just paid ads on social media, there are so many more opportunities that cost very little but are extremely effective.
Let’s say you own a car repair shop, you have a lot of opportunities to delight the customer and connect with them better.
So let’s go through the experience.
You are repairing a car for a woman in her 30s, she has a husband and 2 kids. When she arrives you instantly say good morning and she tells you what is wrong, you take the key and offer her coffee, because you have a coffee machine to make the experience better for customers.
She asks how long it will take and you say it will take 2–3 days to fix this but you have a car that you can lend to her that she can use while her car is in the repair shop.
This is very convenient, because she usually starts work at 8 a.m. but her husband starts at 7 a.m. and he is on the other side of town, so it would be a massive puzzle for the 2–3 days the car would be in the repair shop.
Of course this would require some amount of money to buy a few cars, so you would have to calculate if it makes sense, but this would be a very effective way to get customers coming back and creating a customer for life!
Then when the car is ready she comes back and when she is paying you ask if she wants to sign up to your newsletter, the perks of being on the newsletter are a 5% discount the next time she comes and some advice on how to keep your car less likely to break down.
She says yes, so now you have another email subscriber which gives you the opportunity to keep reminding her of your company, so your company is top of mind!
You hand her, her car keys and she goes to her car, and in the passenger seat there is a chocolate piece with your branding on it!
She start smiling, eats the chocolate and drives away.
Now, when her car breaks down again, where do you think she will go?
It is VERY likely that she is gonna go to us!
This is how you use every opportunity to create a customer for life which will pay great dividends in the long term!
So lets recap:
Secret #1: We want to create a balance between long-term sales growth or brand building and short-term sales uplifts or sales activation.
Secret #2: Take the next step where you are not selling features or benefits, but you are selling a feeling.
Secret #3: How you can craft your marketing message like Apple with the WWW method.
Secret #4: And everything you do is marketing. There are so many opportunities to delight and connect with our customers, we just have to look for them!
Some action steps you can take!
Start by analyzing where your company is regarding to the balance between the long-term sales growth (brand building) and short term sales uplifts (sales activation) and write down what activities go into which category and see where you stand.
Now it doesn’t have to be 100% accurate and this is an estimate but let me give you 2 examples.
If you created your logo 10 years ago and you paid very little for it or you had it made on Fiverr and you went with the cheapest one you could get, your website is something you put up in 1 night but you are spending a lot of money on ads and you run discounts every month, you are probably spending too much money and resources on sales activation.
On the other hand, if you paid $10,000 for your logo and $30,000 for you website and everything looks spectacular, I mean the kind of logo and website you could win a reward for, but you only spend $100 a month on ads, you are spending too much on brand building and now you need traffic and sales.
I know these are extreme examples, but hopefully you understand better where you stand. If not, you can always comment down below and I’ll give you my professional opinion!
Next you want to find a feeling that you want to sell and just think about if you were using your product, what would you feel?
And then include that feeling as much as you can in your advertising!
Start using the WWW method every time you create an ad and you can also start by using the method for your best sellers!
And then go through the buying process and see where there is an opportunity to delight and connect with your customers. And be on the lookout for opportunities where you can squeeze it in, because some of your best ideas will come when a customer calls, when you order something from someone else or when you least expect it!
And lastly, these are things you can always keep on improving so you don’t have to do everything right away and make it perfect.
I would recommend that in the next 30 days you devote a couple of hours for each secret and then devote some time each month to sharpen them and make them better!
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