Being overweight is good

Posted on March 2, 2012 by admin

Yup – you read it right:  Being over weight is good. But being under weight? Well, you might as well forget it and close up shop. Make sense? No? Let me explain…

“Weight” in advertising relates to how heavily you advertise. In radio, we mean frequency, or how many of your ads your potential audience will hear in a given week. We ad geeks have all kinds of software and data to get us all fired up on info, but you, mister small business person, need only know one number – the number “3”.

“3” refers to the minimum amount of times a listener should hear you in a week. The first time they hear an ad, it slips by. The second time, it jogs their memory. By the third time, it’s starts to become relevant.  Basically 3 is the critical mass you need to hit for ads to become most efficient.

Think of a car engine. Manufacturer specs often refer to an optimal speed. It’s the speed at which the engine works most efficiently. In advertising, it’s a similar concept. As you hit the magic number 3, your ads start to work most efficiently. Under 3 and you are underperforming, risking getting washed away by other ads or sleep. (Sleep is like an eraser for your brain, fyi. )

The difference with advertising compared to a car is the efficiency plateaus and then it’s pure math – the more you plug in, the better results.  It’s like that hammer game at the fair – swing the mallet hard enough, you ring the bell. The more power, the louder that bell rings. But if you under hit, the dude running the game just takes your cash.

THE MOST COMMON MISTAKE AN ADVERTISER MAKES IS BEING UNDER WEIGHT IN THEIR ADVERTISING.

Think of the phrase “under weight”.  What does it mean?  Malnourished. Underfed. Weak.  Is this what you want your advertising to be described as?

The number one reason advertisers are underweight is budget. We want to advertise for 15 weeks but can only afford 5. So what do we do? We s t r e t c h it out. We treat our ad budget like a can of beans during the Depression.  We ration our advertising.

I want you to try something. Instead of having your usual cup of coffee every day, make one cup of coffee on Monday and ration it to last the whole week by adding hot water. After 5 days, tell me how it tastes. I’ll bet you a hundred bucks you can’t last the week. This is what you do to your ads when you advertise under weight.

If you have a finite budget, instead of stretching your budget as if you’re trying on your high school jeans, forget the length of time, your season or whatever. Think in terms of 3. How many consecutive weeks can you get a weight of 3? If it’s 5, just run five. But schedule them to run when you can make the most impact – your busy season.

Don’t believe me? How about I give you a great example. The Manitoba Marketing Network has advertised with me for years. We usually promote their various services through the year but this year we were only able to apply about ¼ what they usually would.

They have a fantastic mentorship program but are limited in the number of businesses that can apply. They usually get 10 or so that apply. We decided to run 1 week of ads per month for the mentorship deadline, and the weight was about 3.5.

So what happened? The first time they ran in October they received 38 applications, more than 3 times the average.  We ran the next one and they got more than 20, still double the usual amount. Now they have a huge wonderful list of businesses in the queue so now we’re switching things up to fill up something else.

My point is don’t try to spread your budget thin to the point it becomes ineffective.

John Ruskin, the 19th century social thinker once wrote:   “It’s unwise to pay too much, but it’s worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money – that’s all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot – it can’t be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.”

Posted in budgeting, customer aquisition, marketing, radio, return on investment, underadvertising | Leave a comment

Are you creating desire or just fulfilling desire?

Posted on October 11, 2011 by admin

Sales and advertising is all about desire.  Customers desire a problem solved or need fulfilled, you desire a sale.

The proactive approach to sales and advertising is creating desire.  The reactive approach is fulfilling desire.  It might sound like I’m splitting hairs, but there is a big difference between the two.

Creating desire means wooing the customer, educating them and showing them the benefits of your product.  It takes work, patience and exceptional knowledge of your customer.

Fulfilling desire means satisfying a demand that is already there.  It’s less about education, more about placing yourself at the right place at the right time and hoping for the best.

If you think of the classic buying cycle, the customer becomes aware of a problem or need, assesses the options available, weigh the pros and cons of the top choice, make a decision and confirming it was the right choice.

Creating desire can come into play in all parts of the cycle.  For example, if you sell all-wheel drive cars, you can create desire by simply stating the problem: winter traction for most cars is terrible and could lead to an accident.  You can also create desire by simply saying you can solve that problem:  Intuitive All-Wheel Drive is standard on the 2011 Nissan Murano.  You can create desire by highlighting your advantages: precise steering and confident handling, a smooth ride and user-friendly controls.  You can create desire at the decision stage:  no-pressure test-drive or financing incentives.  Finally, you can reinforce that desire simply by stating your brand position.  This confirms the purchase, reduces buyer’s remorse and elevates the individual’s status through their purchase of a brand new Nissan.

The beauty of a strategy that creates desire is everyone is your customer, it just depends on where they are in the buying cycle and how patient you are.  You can potentially influence 100% of the population.

Advertising mediums that best suit creating desire are broadcast media.  I will flat-out say that radio is the most cost efficient form.  It’s why I’m in radio.

Fulfilling desire comes into play only at the decision stage.  The prospective customer has already decided what he or she wants and is looking where to get it.  It’s too late to really influence their decision – they’ve already weighed the pros and cons and decided.   If you are the lucky choice, then you get the sale.  If not, you have only one option:  drop your price to tilt the scales in your favour.

So realistically, with this style of advertising, you only have a fraction of the population to influence.  The more niche you are, the worse because you are unknown.  The more heavy competitive the environment, the worse because each competitor will take a share of the pie.  Simply put: advertising simply to fulfill desire will pay the bills in the short term but put you out of business in the long term.

Advertising mediums like newspaper, direct mail, online search, and social media are “fulfill desire” mediums.

Yes, social media and search advertising.  Don’t fool yourself into otherwise.  Have you ever “liked” a product or service you didn’t already know?  (Besides your friend’s home-based jewelry business – you’re  just doing that so they don’t get pissed at you next time you see them).  I didn’t think so.  Search advertising simply puts you on the list of something they are already looking for.  It’s like paying someone to stand outside your door and tell customers you are located through that door they are going through.

The days of just coasting on fulfilling desire went away decades ago.  If you are afraid to create desire because it involves too much risk, is too expensive or whatever else, you’re in the wrong business.

Learn about your customers, learn about marketing and create desire at every stage of the buying cycle.  You owe it to yourself and your customers.

Posted in Facebook, Social Media, buying cylce, customer aquisition, direct mail, marketing, print, radio | Leave a comment

Sorry about the delay

Posted on September 26, 2011 by admin

For my regular readers, I apologize for the lack on content lately.  I’ve come down with a bad case of tendinitis and typing is painful.  Plus, I took a nice vacation with my wife.

Expect a triumphant return within the next week!

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

How Soon Will My Ads Start Working?

Posted on August 18, 2011 by admin

How Soon Will My Ads Start Working?

One of the biggest, knottiest questions I ever get – and to be honest, ask myself sometimes – is  “How soon will the ads work?”

It’s a far more complicated question to answer than you think.  Advertising is really applied psychology and unlike chemistry or physics, there are no magic formulas that work on everyone.  The only thing more unpredictable than a human being is a group of human beings.

So when I came across this article from Roy Williams, the Wizard of Ads, I thought it was one of the best discussions I’ve seen on how soon will ads work.  So, here it is.  If you want to read the original, you can find it here.

Trevor

P.S.  My last comment before you read on is this:  We all need to shed the idea that advertising is immediate.  It’s a myth, a fallacy, an absolute lie.  Immediate results from advertising are simply the result of previous ads, consumer need and luck.  The winners in the marketing world know this and create strategies for the long term and consider short term gains a bonus.

How Soon Will My Ads Start Working?
These are the 5 questions you must answer before you can know how soon your ads will start working:

Q. 1: What percentage of the noise made in your category – in all the different media combined – is being made by you? This is your Share of Voice.

Q. 2: What percentage of the population will actively be in the market for your product or service this week? This is your Product Purchase Cycle.

Food has a very short Product Purchase Cycle. The shorter the Product Purchase Cycle, the quicker your ad campaign will reach maximum ROI.

Cars have a medium-length Product Purchase Cycle. The average American trades cars every 180 weeks (42 months.) Consequently, 0.55 percent of us will buy or lease a car this week. (Does this mean that anyone who advertises cars is wasting 99.45 percent of his investment?)

That’s right; 180 weeks (42 months) is a medium-length product purchase cycle. What do you suppose is the Product Purchase Cycle for HVAC system replacement? Engagement rings? Furniture? Products with longer purchase cycles require more time for their ad campaigns to ramp up to their full potential.  These campaigns usually show poor results during the first 90 to 150 days then begin to deliver increasingly good results until the growth curve begins to flatten out about halfway through the Purchase Cycle. If the purchase cycle is 10 years, the campaign will start slow, then generate increasingly good results until it levels off in about 5 years. You will then have to continue advertising just to maintain the market share you’ve achieved. If relevant new information is not injected into the campaign at this time, the advertiser will become frustrated and disgruntled and begin to say things like, “Our ads aren’t as good as they used to be,” or “I don’t think we’re reaching the right people.”

Q. 3: How many people will ever be in the market for this product or service?  What percentage of the public will ever consider this product to be relevant? A high percentage of the public will someday need a refrigerator, furniture, HVAC system replacement and an engagement ring. The best strategy for advertisers such as these is for them to use relevance and repetition to become the provider the customer thinks of first and feels the best about.

But what about fine formal china, such as Royal Doulton at $100 per place setting and the solid silver tableware that accompanies it? What percentage of today’s public will ever be in the market for these?

Q. 4: What degree of credible urgency does your ad contain? Is there any reason for the customer to take action now? You can shorten a Product Purchase Cycle by making a strong offer that is time-limited or quantity-limited. If you create a once-in-a-lifetime offer for a product with a long purchase cycle, you’ll likely move a number of people into the market who would otherwise have purchased at a later date. If your offer is powerful and credible, you’ll see great success. But don’t take a good thing too far; the more often you do this, the less well it will work. Sadly, the success of this “urgency” technique makes it highly addictive. Almost without exception, the advertiser who makes a once-in-a-lifetime offer will choose to make a similar, once-in-a-lifetime offer within a year. Soon his “sale” ads lose all credibility and his customers will begin to ask, “When does this go on sale?” God help us. We pushed a good thing too far and we’ve trained the customer NOT to buy unless we’re promoting a massive discount.

Marketing is tricky. It almost makes you want to hit yourself in the head with a hammer sometimes, doesn’t it?

Q. 5: What is your Competitive Environment? In other words, how well are your competitors known? How good are they at what you do? Your ads are not the only ads your customer will see and hear.  Is a competitor making a more powerful offer than you?

Share of Voice can be purchased.
Share of Mind must be earned.

Share of Voice is the percentage of noise in the marketplace that is yours. Share of Mind is the mental real estate you have purchased in consciousness of your customer.

Share of Voice times Relevance equals Share of Mind.

Frequent repetition of your ads will earn you a higher Share of Voice. But a big Share of Voice times zero Relevance equals zero Share of Mind and zero results.

Most advertisers talk in their ads about what the customer should care about, what they ought to care about, instead of what they actually care about.

If you remember nothing else from today’s memo, remember these two things and you’ll do well:

1. Clarity is more important than creativity.

2. Relevance is more important than repetition.

NOTE:  I did NOT say that creativity and repetition don’t count.

Sell on.

Roy H. Williams

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Do we really know enough about our customers?

Posted on August 10, 2011 by admin

At its heart, marketing is about offering a product or service that people want, at a price they are willing to pay and in a place or way they are willing to get it.

As business owners and sales people, we spend a lot of time on learning our products and services, knowing their features inside and out.  We also intimately know our prices.  We can quote our profit margins or burn rates with ease and we darn well know what our competition is priced out at.  We agonize over signage, store layouts, website and anything else that reflects on our door – virtual or otherwise.

But what do we really know about our customers?

If I was to ask you about your customers, what would you tell me?  Demographic info certainly, like age, gender and maybe a little lifestyle info.  Perhaps you’ll talk about the days or seasons when they are more likely to buy, or maybe some stats like average sale per customer.  But these things only tell us what our customers do and a little about who they are.

What you really need to know is why do your customers buy from you.

The quickest answer is usually “they like us.”  We express that as better customer service. We know our customers by name, we love them like our own little hatchlings, kiss-kiss hug-hug.  But do they like you?  How do you know?  Have you asked ALL of them?  Have you asked half of them?  Have you even asked one percent of them?  Probably not, so how do you know?  Perhaps they really only come because they can’t conveniently reach your competitor, which means you are vulnerable if that competitor relocates nearby.

Another frequent answer is “we’re the best value.”  We say customers know they are getting the best value, because – like us – they have shopped all the competitors and they can see they are getting the best bang from their buck with us.   But what about those people who come and see you first or haven’t had time to check the competitors?  How do they know you’re the best value?  How do you even define value – is it the same way they do?  And is it really the same for every customer?

The most important part of the sales equation is the customer and yet, we never invest in getting to understand them better and knowing the answer to these questions.

You spend money on training and buy the latest product lines.  You hire an accountant to look at your books and make sure your expenses are line with revenue. Heck, you even hire people like me to design advertising campaigns to draw customers in.

So why don’t you invest in researching your customers?

I know, I know, you’re a small business and research is expensive.  Yes, research companies can be costly, but the Canada-Manitoba Business Service Centre has TONS of information and they even have staff who will help get you the industry information you need – for free.

I know, I know, your time is limited and research takes time.  But think of the value you’d get by reserving a room in local restaurant and inviting 10-20 customers for a 1 hour mini-focus group.  It would be immeasurable.

My point is this:  the customer is the most important part of your business and if you are not researching them, how can you know if ANY of the choices you are making are correct?

Before you bring in new products, change locations, advertise or anything, spend time on knowing who your customers are and why they come to see you.  It’s the most valuable information you need and most of us never take the time to ask.

Posted in customer aquisition, customer engagement, customer value, demographics, marketing, psychographics | Leave a comment

A reason to get emotional

Posted on July 13, 2011 by admin

I just read an article in the Globe and Mail about Google’s vision of the future of shopping.  Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt outlined the shopping experience they are on the verge of creating.

“Let’s think about it… I want to buy a t-shirt because it’s hot, and I’m walking down the street. What I really want is my phone to understand my brand preference. And I’m walking down the street and the phone receives information that says: on the left you can get this particular brand at 20 per cent off, and on the right there’s another brand at 30 per cent off… I choose, based on the information that comes up on the phone, and maybe it makes a recommendation based on my past history…and then I turn left or I turn right, I walk into a store and I say, I want the t-shirt. Somehow, it already knows I want it, I tap my phone on the pay terminal — so I don’t even have to get a credit card out — and they hand me the shirt.

Wow – sounds great doesn’t it? In fact, he says this is all possible now with technology they already have.

The problem is when I walk into a 7-Eleven, I have trouble deciding which Slurpee flavor to have out of the 8 options, so this magic phone is going to “understand my brand preference” and make recommendations for me?

Talk about over simplifying the decision making process.  What if I don’t like the cut of that shirt it’s recommending?  What if I had a bad experience at that particular store before?  What if I bring my wife shopping with me and she’s the one picking out my shirts and doesn’t like it?  What if my preferred brand’s latest line looks like crap?  Or what if I’m feeling reckless and decide to buy that other shirt in the store I just passed, which is waaaaaay too expensive but I don’t care right now?

We all know the old sales adage right?  People buy with emotion and justify with reason.  It’s not just words – it’s true.  How many times have you decided to splurge on a bottle of wine that was twice the price you wanted to spend because the dinner was going so well and you wanted to feel generous?  Then you tell yourself “It’s okay, it’s a special occasion.”

Now, I’m not saying this is what happens all the time.  We make dozens of purchases that are solely based on logic and reason.  But that’s only when we have an absence of emotion.  If we aren’t emotionally involved in whether we want item Y or Item Z, then we’ll let reason decide.  And when we’re talking transactions involving money, then price is the natural determining factor.

But what happens when emotion does come into play?  Have you ever wished you could change your hairstylist but you just couldn’t because it might hurt her feelings, even though she only does a so-so job?  Did you really need to buy that $3 box of chocolate almonds from the neighbor’s kid?  There are EIGHT THOUSAND PEOPLE who paid a non-refundable deposit of $50 just to be put on a LIST for Jets tickets IF they ever open up.  That’s a quick $400K payday for True North for THE CHANCE to purchase, not even a purchase itself.

If you want to win, play the emotional card.  Your customers are people, not walking ATMS you draw money from.  Speak to their emotions and they will respond in kind – with their wallets.

Posted in buying modes, emotion, marketing | 4 Comments

Death by Discount

Posted on June 27, 2011 by admin

I walked into a mall a while back looking for a shirt.  I walked by a men’s clothing store that had signs that said “Massive blowout”, “Everything over 50% off” and in big bold letters “SALE! SALE! SALE!”

Do you know what I did? I walked on by.

Whoa… hang on a second.  This is Winnipeg right?  Isn’t this the city where we supposedly drive halfway across the city to save $.50 cents on a bag of potatoes.  We’re cheap and pre-programmed for sales and discounts, aren’t we?  Then why the heck did I not go in, especially considering I was in the market for their products?

I used to shop there once.  I bought a couple shirts, a pair of jeans and even a suit once.  They seemed like a good deal – 20% off, 25% off.  But then I started seeing 50% off, 60% off and not just to clear out seasonal stuff, but all the time.

Eventually I learned two things:

  1. Why buy now?  It’ll always be on sale so I’ll just keep waiting a lower price.
  2. The jeans I bought at 25% are now 50% off, so I’m pissed off because I obviously paid too much.

So, I stopped shopping there.  Evidently so did many others because the sales signs kept getting bigger, the discounts larger and the sales people even started standing at the front of the store.  The place looked like it was BEGGING for business, like those squeegee people standing on street corners.

It’s toned down a bit since then, but I’ll never shop there. I can’t trust the quality of their goods – it must be garbage to be that cheap.  I can’t trust their prices because their always seems to be lower ones.  I can’t trust their advertising because they tell me everything must go but the store never empty’s.

Roy Williams calls this phenomenon “The Cocaine of Advertising”.  Seth Godin would say this is your tactics drowning out your strategy.  I call it Death by Discount.  Maybe not the death of the business, but definitely the death of profit margin.

This is how it happens:  Sales are slow so you have a one-day sale.  You get a big sales push and then it drops down to normal.  So, you do it again.  And again. And again.  But now, you have to keep discounting deeper to keep the sales up.  You notice your advertising is not as effective, so you start advertising BLOWOUT sales to get attention.  But that’s not working so you cut your advertising and you fire staff and hire cheaper ones.  Do you see how it spirals out of control?

You need to beware this cycle before it starts.  Remember Hangers?  They used to have radio remotes every week for years until they discounted themselves into memory.  Don’t be like them!  Don’t be seduced by short bursts in sales.  Think long term and keep the eye on the profit margin.  Use sales judiciously and use them to gain NEW customers or new customer data.  Don’t discount yourself to death!

Posted in customer aquisition, marketing, sales | 6 Comments

What the Return of the NHL really says

Posted on June 20, 2011 by admin

I’ve been watching the unbelievable story of the return of the NHL to Winnipeg from two points of view: firstly, as a hockey fan and unflagging supporter of Winnipeg; and secondly, as a student in communications, watching in awe how an incredible display of hockey mania has unfolded.

It’s amazing really.  We all knew the NHL would be successful, but the response has garnered international attention.  The arena will be sold out for every game for the next 5 years.  Unbelievable.

The funny thing is the NHL was here before, albeit in different economic times.  The hockey demand was here too – it never left actually.  Winnipeg and Manitoba have always been a hotbed for hockey enthusiasm. Yet when the Jets were here, attendance was generally low. 8,000 season tickets in a year was a stretch, never mind the 13,000 just sold, with 3 to 5 year commitments no less.

So what changed?

The story.

The story is what changed.

In 1996, the Jets franchise was a battered old fighter, reeling on the ropes. The desire to go on was there, but there were not enough resources to keep him going. The core of devoted fans were too small to save him. It was a lost cause.

Fast forward 15 years and the story has changed: the fighter has come back, he’s healed, found new trainers and the game has changed. He’s leaner, meaner and everyone’s cheering for a come back.

Everyone loves an underdog. We cheered Rocky against Apollo Creed, Luke to destroy the Death Star, Marlin to find Nemo.  The return of the NHL is far more compelling than the arrival of the NHL.  The return is a righting of a wrong, the against all odds story of redemption.  The arrival would have been just one step in a process, so much more prosaic than the return.

It’s the classic story archetype – rags to riches, the impossible task, the challenger coming back from insurmountable odds. We love those stories. In fact, this same story has been told since Aristotle.

It’s the story that has lead people to move from hungry fans to insanely rabid supporters, snapping up tickets at an unprecedented pace.  It’s the story that has moved people to hope, to dream, to react.

I know, I know, some of you are thinking this is simply a matter of supply and demand.  But that supply and demand was there in the early 1990s and there wasn’t this kind of fervor, even when the team was on the brink of disaster.  I argue that ticket sales would not have been as stunning without the back story.

To me, this is another example of a basic truth:  the best story always wins.   Learn to tell a great story, and you too might see the same success the return of the NHL has in Winnipeg.

Posted in marketing, story | 1 Comment

Your website is more than an online brochure

Posted on May 30, 2011 by admin

You are in business for a reason.  Whether you’re a retailer, a fundraiser, a furnace installer or circus clown, you have something to offer that someone that else should be willing to pay for.  Good marketing is all about explaining why you are better, different, and valuable.

What baffles me is when I hear a great ad and am compelled to visit their website, all sanity disappears and is replaced with a pool of useless information.  Boring and irrelevant stuff like compliance, mission statements, certifications, how the company was started by Grandpa Jake in his garage 20 years ago, blah, blah, blah.

A business website is not an online brochure like most people think it is.  A business website is not for accreditation submissions, financial audit or a time capsule for quaint stories.

A business website is really a persuasive sales and marketing tool.

The vast majority of people Google a company before doing business with them – it’s a fact.  Your website therefore is the last critical piece in the consumer action chain right before they call you.  So your website needs to support your sales and not be filled with stuff that makes other people (boards, accountants) happy.

Let me put it this way:  If your radio ads say you have the biggest and best widgets, your print ads say you have the biggest and best widgets, then please explain to me why your website tells me you are COR certified and have been in business 35 years?

As a sales and marketing tool, your website has 2 main functions:

  1. Your website is a salesperson – it persuades people to buy your product or service.
  2. Your website is a customer service representative – it offers valuable information to satisfy the needs of existing customers.

Persuasion and Customer Satisfaction should always be your top web goals.  As such, approach your website like you do your sales team.  Arm and focus your website like you do a sales person and you’ll see conversions and sales soar.

Here are some of “sales” resources you should provide customers online:

  • Sell sheet: 3 to 5 points about why YOU are a better option (this is your USP).
  • Customer Service Promises and Guarantees: explain how you stand behind your product and your word.
  • Product specifications, FAQS and comparisons: people want this info, so don’t make them go somewhere else to find it.  They’ll find it anyways – better from you than your competition.
  • Testamonials: people want to know you’re for real.   Change them often or else you look like you have only 3 satisfied customers – ever.
  • Contact information FRONT AND CENTRE: Don’t bury your contact information!! Studies show the majority of visitors websites are just looking to contact you.  Not displaying your contact info prominently is like giving out a business card out with no name on it.

All that other stuff can be in there, but not front and centre because it’s not really what your customer needs.  They need to know you are trustworthy, professional, competitive and qualified.  The faster they learn it online and the easier you make it for them to contact you, the better ALL your marketing will work.

Posted in customer aquisition, marketing, unique selling proposition, websites | Leave a comment

Becoming memorable

Posted on May 25, 2011 by admin

Advertising is all about being memorable.  If a customer remembers who you are and can associate you with something they need, you have a good chance to make the sale.  It’s as simple as that.

The hard part is becoming memorable.

Being memorable means you are noteworthy and easily recalled.  In other words, you’re filed away in someone’s brain as important and can be remembered when prompted.

I’ve always assumed that some people have better memories than others, yet it’s been proven that memory isn’t a set trait, it’s a skill that can be trained.  There are even yearly competitions to see who is the master of memory, where the champion will memorize the precise order of two decks of cards in less than a minute.

What fascinates me about these memory champions aren’t their feats of incredible memorization, but rather HOW they manage these feats.

In general, they use 3 powerful strategies:  Visualization, Association and the power of the Extraordinary.

To start, memory champions use detailed visualization, creating places in their mind – like famous buildings or places from their childhood – and they imagine all the objects inside. The more vivid the image, the better it can be recalled.

Next, they associate things they want to remember with each of the objects, anchoring them in their memories and placing them in an easy-to-access structure.

Finally, they make it extraordinary – either by visualizing objects that are bizarre looking or out of place or by stringing them together in an improbable tale that is impossible to forget.

Once combined, these strategies allow memory champions to remember strings of hundreds of random numbers, entire pages of poems and prose or just about anything.  It’s unreal.

What they are doing is not impossible or superhuman, they are just mastering what we all do to remember things.  Yours and my memory systems are based on the same tenets, so it stands to reason that if we want to become MORE memorable, we can apply the same principles.

So what do you have to do to become more memorable?

Visualization – Suggest a place or a situation and the mind of the listener populates it with images of their own memories or imagination.  In advertising, we call this “The Theatre of the Mind” and it’s the strength of radio, though it can be used in any other medium.

Association – make the words and images mean something.  Taglines, brand propositions even phone numbers can be more easily recalled with familiar cues.

Extraordinary – this is the most important part.  We need to fight the urge to sound “right”.  Right means familiar, which we know from the memory process also means “forgettable.”  We need to stand out and not be afraid to ruffle some feathers.  Use intense detail, twists on common phrases or take a situation to the extreme to be memorable.

The people you are asking to consider you AREN’t memory champions, they are regular people.  You need to do the heavy lifting for them, make it easy for them to remember you.

Use these three techniques in your advertising and you’ll be guaranteed to get better results.

Posted in customer engagement, marketing, unique selling proposition | 1 Comment