Getting People to Buy What You’re Selling — Key Takeaways from Seducing Strangers

So I was just in Los Angeles on vacation, more specifically West Hollywood. While riding my Boosted Board on Sunset Blvd. I decided to stop in a quant book store called Book Soup (great place, go check it out). I had already brought 4 books along with me for the trip, but I can’t help myself when it comes to books, so I decided to see what they had.

After about 30 minutes of searching I ran across a little black book with a faux leather textured cover, the name Seducing Strangers — How to Get People to Buy What You’re Selling. Already I was really interested. I’m fascinated by what motivates people and how we, as people who sell things, can persuade people to purchase our products. After looking into it further I discovered that the author, Josh Weltman, was a co-producer on the one television series I ever got into, Mad Men. He is the guy behind Don Draper’s magic, the one who brought advertising to life, presenting it in a realistic fashion. The guy who wrote the copy for the ads they pitched clients in the show. All this time I had been amazed by Don Draper, his creative ability, his influential skill, but behind it all was Josh Weltman. I had to read this book!

Overall, the book was an extremely interesting and worthwhile read. Below I have laid out my key takeaways from the book mixed in with some of my own thoughts and elaborations. You can find Josh’s book here.

Overview of the book: Basically it’s a guide to how advertising works, how to do it the right way so that customers feel a part of your brand. Seduced rather than sold to.

How Josh describes advertising/marketing: Take a product or service that nobody knows or cares about, use words, pictures, stories, and music, to become a product or service somebody, somewhere can’t imagine living without.

Important Points:

General Rules

• Happiness occurs when expectations are met or exceeded by reality. Your marketing sets the expectations, while the product or service is then delivered, either missing, meeting or exceeding expectations.
• individuals and companies make customers happy by setting expectations at a level that their product or service can exceed
• Seducing the customer is about listening to them and understanding their feelings, wants, needs, and motives. It understands what people desperately want to hear about themselves and telling them just that.
• A good place to start getting someone, somewhere, to do something, is to figure out exactly what the people doing the getting (customers) are looking to get
• What is their ultimate goal through consumption, what are they trying to achieve
• When a company starts spending a large part of its marketing budget to attract customers who account for so little profit, their days are numbered. You need to go after your raving fans, the 20% who make up 80% of your sales, the ones who aren’t concerned about a deal because they can’t live without your product, service, brand
• People will always pay attention to negative ads, no matter the source, however when it comes to positive recommendations, people will only trust their own kind
• can account for a lot of the reason why brands that are made by the users for the users are usually successful. When you have that credibility that you area member of the community, someone that others like you can trust, then its much easier to persuade those people
• People really appreciate straight talk and honest information. The more human you can make your product, service or brand sound, the more trust you will have and the easier it will be to seduce
• Many times we have to take some time, take a step back from what we are doing and see what exactly the problem is made up of before trying to solve it. What are the major forces that are influencing it. Rather then jumping right into it and getting blinded by our solution.
• Effective communication requires knowing your audience and caring about their satisfactions
• People share messages about products and services only to the extent that they support and advance the story of the hero (them)
• “how will the story of my products improve my customers’ odds of becoming who they want to be?”
• Before selecting which medium best complements your message, first identify how and why a person interacts with that medium in the first place
• what is the audiences goal on instagram, facebook, a magazine, Netflix etc.? How does that fit in with the message you are looking to convey
• some mediums are passive (television) while others are mote interactive and purposeful (internet)…this has implications on how you reach these audiences
• Persuading on the internet is about getting someone who is doing something, to do something else
• Better is in the mind of the person who’s buying the mousetrap, not the builder.
• it doesn’t matter how great your ideas are, what matters is what you can sell
• quality is measured by how well you meet the customer’s needs, not how good of a product you think you created
• If you come up with an innovative idea for a new mousetrap, but fail to communicate why it will change what people expect from a new mousetrap, you’re going to miss out on a lot of sales (the case for advertising)
• Information is a message that reduces doubt, the more a message successfully reduces doubt, the less doubt there is to reduce
• this is why the better a message works the first time, the less effective it will be going forward, this is why we must constantly be innovative with our marketing message. Great communicators know when to move on at the right time
• Messages that tend to work the best are the ones that are sent out into the world with one well-defined goal. You need to figure out what the goal of the message is and then commit.
• why are you sending that message out? what’s its purpose? how will it achieve that purpose? is it achieving its purpose?
• Sometimes the best way to change a brand or reputation is to change the promise not the product (in other words repositioning)
• same product new market, same product new purpose, same product new message…
• People are driven to act by their own impulses far more often than outside forces. Advertising is not about changing people’s beliefs its about confirming them.
• the job of a good persuader is to figure out what people want and what motivates them to make the choices they do, finding the urge within and waking it up
• it’s not about convincing people to do things they don’t want to, it’s about persuading them to do a little more of what they already do
• Getting people to change their minds is too difficult. People will believe that what they feel inside is true, people will rarely change their beliefs, no matter how much evidence you give them to the contrary.
• The money is in telling people they’re right and to keep doing what they’re doing, preferably with your brand, product, or service
• Selling your ideas is the process of figuring out how to make other people take ownership of them
• Focus on the benefits your customers are buying, not the features your company is selling
• to motivate people you need a gripping story, a work of art, not mindless/impersonal content
• find the most human things you can about a product or service and highlight those
• persuasion relies on the ability to care about what your audience feels (empathy)
• persuasion must transfer facts, while also evoking emotions
• People buy things for the way it benefits them
• does the watch make you well respected, does the sprinkler make your lawn look good to the neighborhood, does the food fill you up, does the Starbucks make you feel a part of a brand and a community?
• Figure out what are people’s motivations behind buying, what do they plan to get from the transaction, rather then trying to push down people’s throats what you want them to get out of it, or what you think they want
• seduce your audience by highlighting the benefits that interest them most…be honest, people will be pleasantly surprised and respond well to it (show the customer that you understand them, you are one with them)
• Every message that is looking to persuade, sell, or seduce, must answer one of the following four questions, but never all at the same time

What is it?

Why do I need it now?

What makes it different from other things?

Who else thinks its good?

Making captivating messages

• A trick is that if the first part of a speakers message confuses, then the second part must explain, and vice versa. The initial confusion get ours adrenaline going and forces our brains to get involved, then when we are able to put the message together and it makes sense, we feel a sense of reward, like we were able to figure out the message rather than it being so literal.
• It’s something from Aristotle called an enthymeme, if interested look into it
• With ads, Instagram posts, etc. try doing something totally different…something confusing or out of place gets people’s attention, but then give them enough so that they can connect the dots and figure out what is going on
• Make the description confusing, but explain it with the picture, or make the picture confusing and explain it with the description, let people make the connection
• in any medium, the expected can be woven in with the unexpected to keep people engaged and the message interesting

Branding

• a brand is just another word for reputation
• building a brand is the process of using advertising to set market expectations, then delivering products to meet or exceed those expectations
• creating happy customers is a lot more about aligning expectations with product reality that it is about product quality
• you can have a pretty good product and market as an economic option and make customers happy, as they are getting something that is better than what they expected, you can also have the same good product, but market it as extremely high quality, miss expectations and piss off customers
• a brand is a perception that only exists in the minds and memories of those who have both expectations of the brand, and experience as to how the brand delivers on them
• products and services are the way a company delivers on its promise, the brand is the reputation the company earns for how well it delivers
• a good knife solves part of the problem of deboning a fish, a good brand solves as much of the fish problem as it can
• have to think of the entire ecosystem around the products and services you create, how can you add value to your customers lives in ways that relate back to what you offer. So you sell a knife, why did the customer buy a knife, what might they use it for? How can you show that you understand them and how they interact with the product?

4 steps to promoting a product throughout its lifecycle

Introductory ads — designed to inspire curiosity. The best way to arouse curiosity and generate inquiries is by leaving something out, encouraging them to look into it further

Trial ads — after introductory ads you run trial ads which are meant to encourage a sense of urgency through things like limited time offers. These provide a temporary bump in traffic/sales etc.

• Strange as it sounds, the best way to get people to try or buy your product or service is to somehow limit their ability to do so. Inspire a sense of urgency and exclusivity in people to get them to act, now

Differentiating ads- these build on the brand relationship, they are meant to increase market share. They do this by showcasing the unique differences that your product apart from everyone else’s. They highlight your unique selling proposition. When you successfully differentiate your self or product, then customers can more easily make the decision that fits best with who they believe they are

• When promoting a product that’s not much different than the competition, look at the people who use it. What makes each of them different and how can you connect with them in a way that other brands aren’t.
• These help your customer familiar with and a part of your brand.
• Bond with your audience by going where they go and doing what they do. Blend into their communities so that your brand feels like a natural fit with their lifestyle.
• to set yourself apart from others you need to be contrarian, you need to do the opposite of what people expect
• if you cant be the first in a category, set up a new category that you can own. Instead of being another car to win a mediocre award, be the first brand to turn it down. Do things that make you stand out from the pack.

Mutual love and respect ads — these are about solidifying your relationship with your most valuable/loyal customers, protecting your margins. These ads aren’t meant to be appreciated or understood by all. Its about highlighting what makes one company’s customers different from all others. Sometimes they are messages that only make sense to your core customer base. The whole point is that only certain people can hear them (those that have bought into your brand as a whole. This is where you show them that you know them and it confirms their belief that this company should be a part of their life (Building a lifestyle brand that people cant live without)

• You want to treat these customers like Kings, paying little attention to others

Big Ideas

• When looking for big ideas, come up with small ways to ding the competition
• finding something that demands a response can get ideas flowing. Think about what it would take to make your competition’s day hell. What could you say that would get them nervous, get them scrambling
• thinking about these things, whether you use them or not, can set you in the direction towards a big/bold idea, something worth talking about, and that’s what it’s about in a noisy world, grabbing people’s attention

Pitching Ideas

• the sale is in the setup
• find a relevant general principle that all in the room can agree on
• you need to convince people to buy into and agree with the key principle or insight underlying your idea before you try to sell a specific way of illustrating or executing it
• basically you want your idea to be the natural progression of the information you have outlines in the setup. by doing this your audience is then able to discover the idea for themselves then becoming an idea they have taken ownership of. People are much more willing to endorse an idea they believe to be true because they “came up with it” when really you just guided them towards the thing that you created
• It’s easy for the other party to say no, no seemingly has little downside. But highlight the downsides of no. Let them no what might happen if they say no. If you go to another firm and they say yes and it becomes a success. If the competition uses your idea and you no longer can use it. No has downsides. make no feel much more costly than yes.
• Once you’ve got your “yes” answer, drop everything, shake hands and just get out, fight the urge to present more information just for the sake of it

Virality

• What goes viral is something that changes, redefines, or expands some groups idea about what’s possible
• shock and awe
• “I didn’t know this was possible, I’m going to share this with my community to see if they have ever seen something like this before”

Josh’s book is an awesome tool for anyone looking to sell something. Its full of practical/applicable knowledge and examples to help you get out your creative funk and on the road to seducing. Hopefully I saved you the time it took me to read it and now you can just get started making amazing stuff!