Watertight Marketing by Bryony Thomas
As a child I enjoyed watching the Road Runner cartoons; it was hilarious to watch Wile E Coyote go crashing down a ravine through a great big hole disguised as part of the road. It’s not so funny to watch a potential customer crash out of their decision to buy from you because you’ve left a gap in the path. But that is exactly what happens every day, to businesses large and small. Somewhere along the way there’s a leap too far, and your potential new customer crosses you off their list.
A buying decision is made in steps. How many steps is largely related to its importance, or perceived risk. The less important, or risky, the purchase, the fewer thought processes involved.
When people are buying something that’s important, expensive, or risky, they don’t generally do it on a whim. They go through a few stages weighing up options and looking at alternatives. You will never find a magic formula that shortcuts the psychology of this decision-making process. Every step on this journey is one where they could lose interest if your message isn’t right in that moment. By plugging gaps between stages with effective marketing, you will generate and retain more profitable customers.
Where on this line your buyers would place the decision to buy the sorts of things you sell is usually based on a combination of these factors:
Finance: the relative impact of the financial outlay involved or the level to which they are entering an ongoing commitment.
Time: the amount of time it will take for them to reach a decision with which they remain happy, and the time it will then take to get the value they wanted from what they’ve bought.
Other people: the level to which the decision affects others, and how important those opinions are to the buyer.
Functional complexity: the degree to which the buyer easily understands how to get the value they were looking for, or the number of moving parts involved in implementing whatever they’ve bought.
Status: the degree to which a person’s sense of identity or reputation is affected by the purchase.
My definition of marketing (in a commercial context) is supporting people through to a buying decision with which they remain happy, even if that’s not to buy from you.
Many businesses see the task of marketing as generating leads for salespeople to follow up. It’s a short-sighted view that costs millions. Marketing is the whole process of taking your goods or services to market.
Marketing is about purposeful moments of pause from which people make Active Choices.
I want you to turn your thinking about your sales funnel on its head. I want you, for the moment, to stop thinking about how to pour more into the top and look instead from the bottom upwards. This way, when you do come to spend time, money and energy telling the world about what you do, you’ll get more back. In fact, by addressing the Touchpoint Leaks from the bottom up you won’t need to pour as much in the top to get the same, or better, results.
When you do not stay appropriately in touch with customers, they are likely to forget about you. When it comes to buying again, or recommending to others, your name may not come to mind.
There is a critical time period between when a person has bought something, and when they consider themselves a loyal customer. This is the Welcome Window, and is your chance to make a lasting impression.
When there is limited personality or human touch in visuals and written style, or inconsistencies in experience across the organisation, trust is undermined, leading the potential customer to question whether or not to buy from you.
There are times when it’s not the best solution that wins, it’s the one the buyer likes most.
When the first purchase seems like a really big leap or potentially risky decision, people will delay or defer their decision to get started. This is where you need to create smaller stepping stones.
Before spending a lot of money, or making a decision they consider risky, a buyer will often consult a third party, for example – a partner or colleague. In many cases, their approval is explicitly required. If that person says no to the purchase it will rarely proceed.
When weighing up alternatives for a purchase of considerable risk, people will look for evidence to back up claims that are being made. Where no proof can be found for the promises you make, the buyer is likely to look elsewhere.
At the early stages of a sale, or simply when someone is curious about a topic but not ready to purchase, piling in with sales information, or deep knowledge and expertise, can be overwhelming and off-putting.
Different people consume information in different formats depending on who they are, and where they are. If your material is not formatted in a way they find easy, and enjoyable, they are unlikely to access it.
If you see the same information (or brand) represented in multiple places, or from sources you already trust, you are more likely to act on it. If you are not showing up where your potential buyers naturally look, you’re missing out.
Not showing up, or being accessible, when the buyers are looking for the kind of things you sell. People will often research or browse information outside office hours, or in different time zones. If you are not there when they are looking, you’ve missed them.
At the early stages in a buying decision, people often ask for recommendations from people they loosely know, e.g. a peer in another division, an industry expert, a friend at the pub, in a Facebook status or Tweet. If your name isn’t thrown into the mix at this stage, you may not even be considered.
If you are not crystal clear and consistent in telling people what you do, and why you do it, people will contact you for things you don’t offer, or rule you out for things that you do. You may also attract customers you don’t enjoy, or can’t profit from, working with.
If the first thing people see from you doesn’t immediately grab their attention, and isn’t meaningful in relation to the emotional context of their lives, your marketing becomes wallpaper, and goes unnoticed.
You can’t logic someone into love – and the first step in a buying decision is pretty similar. If you use logic too soon, you’ll usually lose the sale.
You’ll need to define your focus customer group as those who energise your business, and with whom you can sustainably engage at a profit.
You’ll first need emotion to catch their attention, logic to address their specific requirements, and emotion again to cement the relationship.
The first alternative to choosing you is for your potential buyer to do nothing. So, ‘do nothing’ always has to be considered as one of your competitors.
To successfully take people through a whole buying decision, you need to find the right balance between satisfying their emotional and logical needs. The human brain has been described as responding in two ways, the instinctive (fast and emotional) and the intellectual (slow and logical). To really get someone on board, you need to appeal to both modes of thinking. In short, you need marketing messages that tick their emotional and logical boxes.
You need to satisfy the different types of need in a particular order: start with emotion, move on to logic, and then return to emotion.
There are positive emotions like joy or humour, and negative emotions like fear and pain. Any of these emotional appeals can make an excellent basis for your messaging.
Negative emotions are the most effective for initiating action, because a person will naturally do something to move themselves away from uncomfortable feelings. Because they initiate action, negatives work well at the beginning of the process.
Positive emotions are useful throughout, but are essential in the latter stages of a purchasing decision, or as the basis for your company’s brand. This is because they make people feel comfortable and reduce their sense of risk.
Once you’ve ticked a person’s logical boxes, you will find that they switch back into emotion. It’s like a sigh of relief as they reach a decision that they’re happy with. You need to recognise this switch, and validate it.
Start with Away From emotion, go on to logic, then move to Towards emotion.
Negative emotions are best at kicking off a buying journey.
Positive emotions are important for maintaining momentum.
Logic alone will rarely get you noticed.
Emotional answers to logical questions seem slippery.
Overstated messages are often ignored.
Making an emotional connection reduces price sensitivity.
If all things are logically equal, the emotional connection will win the sale.
Emotional connection and comfort creates inertia, increasing customer retention.
Making an emotional connection protects your company from criticism.
A person’s time is precious. It’s their gift to allow you time to tell them about your offer. So, whilst the right timing is important to catch someone when they’re in a buying frame of mind, earning the right to take up a person’s time is critical.
You need to leave the buyer wanting a little more at each stage, and signpost where they can get it.
Think of ways to cut up and repurpose your marketing content to give it a longer shelf life.
You need to earn the right to take up a person’s time.
Think of ways to help people rather than sell to them.
Cut your material into chunks of time that increase in duration through the buying decision.
Never try to shortcut accrued time, though you can shorten elapsed time.
Reward long-term sales results more than you reward the speed of a first sale.
Build in rewards for nurturing buyer relationships.
Use your marketing materials to qualify potential buyers.
Only ever sell the ‘next step’.
Respond quickly when someone enquires.
Have enough fresh content to enable people to stay interested for a period of time.
Use interactions with different materials as indicators of future business so that you can be ready for it.
Buying decisions, particularly high-value or complex ones, are not made in isolation. An enthusiast might spend time on a forum and reading reviews, a husband might ask his spouse and children, and an employee might ask colleagues or their boss. In many cases gaining the input, and approval, of others is essential in the buying decision. You need to know who your buyers are talking to, and get those people on side. You need to know who’s in their ear, and get them on side. You also need to take account of the other voices in your buyer’s head.
Research and collate all the reasons someone would say no to another person’s request to buy your products and services. Address them.
There is no such thing as a killer marketing message. What you need is an interlinked series of messages that start with emotion, move on to logic and then return to emotion – The Logic Sandwich.
Do you ever feel like [insert their negative ’Away From Message’ emotion]?
Leak 1 – Forgotten Customers – Consistent customer communications that proactively address any service needs and keep your business in their minds.
Leak 2 – Poor On-Boarding – A structured approach to communication with new customers as they settle into their relationship with you, which demonstrates that your service is consistent with the expectations they had.
Leak 3 – No Emotional Connection – A visual and written style with a personal touch that’s friendly and allows people to make an emotional connection with your business.
Leak 4 – No Gateway – A coherent set of products that lead helpfully from one to the next with the inclusion of a stepping stone that allows people to understand what it’s like to be a customer before they are one.
Leak 5 – No Critical Approval – A clear way of educating, or helping your buyer educate, anyone who could veto the purchase decision.
Leak 6 – No Proof – A systematic approach to signposting some sort of proof against every promise or claim that you make.
Leak 7 – Information Overload – A steady stream of relevant information that invites people into finding out more.
Leak 8 – How – A range of familiar and novel formats so that people can engage with ease and enjoyment.
Leak 9 – Where – A selection of at least three places to put your materials that you know your potential buyers already access.
Leak 10 – When – A commitment to timing the release of your materials so that people are most likely to notice it.
Leak 11 – Who – A way of getting people talking about your business so that buyers hear something good about you regardless of who they turn to.
Leak 12 – What – An absolute clarity of purpose in telling people what your business does.
Leak 13 – No Emotional Impact – The ability to strike an emotional chord with
