Last year, I took the class How To Launch A Photography Business by the great Pye Jirsa, a photographer and educator I’ve followed for a long time and respect greatly. The class focused on building a photography practice, but there was a section about sales techniques that discussed principles applicable to any kind of business, not just photography. In that segment, Pye mentioned two books which inspired him:
The first was Gary Vaynerchuk’s Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook. This book is well-known and has been summarized countless times, but the message is simple: you must engage the customer (jab) before you can convert them with a CTA (right hook).
The second book was Jeb Blount’s Sales EQ, which makes the case for emotion-based (rather than feature) selling. The biggest takeaway was: “people buy for their reasons, not yours.”
Around the same period, I attended a separate class on business storytelling. The trainer started by asking the class what was the most interesting thing on their Facebook feed that day. (Un)surprisingly, not a single person mentioned something posted by a brand. People are most engaged by content their friends shared, such as cat videos.
It all came together. I realized many businesses are trying too hard to sell — emphasising features rather than benefits; trying to make people buy for their reasons. Most businesses put too much effort into things that people don’t care about, and too little into things that people do care about. Everywhere, we face ads containing price points, lists of features and content that does nothing for the reader. Most digital banners don’t even get seen. Can you even remember the last one you saw? What was the last marketing message you actually paid attention to? We’re inundated with messages asking us to buy something, and most of them are downright boring or irrelevant. As a result, no one cares.
So how do can we not be boring? How can we make someone care? The two books above hint at an answer — if your usual messaging is not working, it’s time to change things and speak to customers’ reasons instead. Based on the above books and other references, here’s my compilation of what sellers can do to make prospects care about their message:
1. Recognise that your customer doesn’t care by default. Earn their attention instead.
Jeb Blount already laid it out: people buy for their reasons, not yours. Many businesses don’t understand the gap between how they sell and buyers buy. They make the mistake of fabricating reasons for the customer to buy, which, of course, resonates only with a minority. Perhaps businesses don’t want to admit that their beloved features aren’t as loved by their customers, but if the customers’ views about the product aren’t aligned with the sellers’, there won’t be any interest. This is even more pertinent in the digital age, where ads have to compete with all the distractions present in everyone’s smartphones.
Before trying to sell, ask yourself: “would my customer want to look away from all the notifications, games and tasks on his phone to listen to me?” if not, change the content to something that has a higher chance of stopping thumbs or turning heads.
Oren Klaff, in his excellent book Pitch Anything, defines the human brain into two parts — the rational neocortex and the croc brain. He posits that you need to appeal to the croc brain (the visceral, emotional, instinctive part of the brain) if you want your message heard. Most business (sometimes unintentionally) focus on Feature-based selling that puts the prospect in cold cognition rather than excitement, reducing the chances of closing.
Instead, we can adopt an “attract first, then orientate” approach. Any sales message or ad should first aim to get someone to listen first, before trying to convince. A popular advertising adage is that the purpose of your copy headline is to get someone to stop and read your first sentence. This mindset resembles any customer journey or marketing funnel you see today — people need to be attracted into the funnel in the first place to get started in your buying journey. Once that happens, you can orientate them to your offering with the rest of your ad.
2. Understand your offer
There are often underlying needs behind consumer choices that your product can address. As a photographer, I was taught that people hire you to solve their problems, not to take pictures. Clients don’t need a photographer to take pictures, they need someone to archive their memories. Similarly, business need to consider what problems their offering solves.
Another mental model to use is jobs theory: consider what jobs your product was hired to do. This famous “milkshake” video showed that people were buying McDonald’s milkshakes for all sorts of unexpected reasons, such as to have something to do during a long drive. McDonald’s raised its milkshake sales by doubling down on these findings (for example, by adding bits of fruit in the milkshake to make it more “fun” to drink”. It requires deep research, but once you know what kind of (unseen) problems your product can solve, you can craft a message that people care about.
3. As Gary Vaynerchuk says, jab before hooking.
It’s a good idea to jab first before hooking. People care when they receive value, be it informational or entertainment value. So include value in your message — and you’ll be remembered for it when the customer is ready to buy! Agood way to think about providing value is through the lens of Hubspot’s inbound framework. As long as you offer content that’s human, relevant and helpful to others, people will listen and care. Hubspot themselves practice what they preach by offering a host of high-quality, free courses on their website — that’s value straight off the bat — which doesn’t sell their product in a contrived manner. They’d be on the top of my list if I ever need a CRM solution. Similarly, SLRLounge does it well with their library of educational videos — they’d be at the top of my list when I decide to spend money on photography education.
You can also provide a “human” form of value by articulating on behalf of your audience. Have you ever clicked on a post on social media and found people commenting with an emphatic “THIS”? I’ve always been interested in the intensity of this reaction: people are engaged when you can articulate their thoughts, needs or problems for them. Empathy speaks, and you can see it in marketing campaigns such as Manulife Singapore’s #Adulting. Being able to identify with and speak to an audience is one thing, but if you can go further and make them say “THIS”, you’ve made people care — that’s what being human is about.
This principle applies to all selling and persuasion — even in SEO you should write to answer people’s questions and not for the sake of crawlers. Understanding your offer (point #2) helps to achieve a similar depth of understanding of your customer. How can you tweak your messaging to elicit “THIS”?
4. Meaning making is the new growth industry
In this interview, Casper ter Kuile, a fellow at Harvard Divinity School, said: “meaning-making is a growth industry”. This exciting quote encapsulates a whole new way of marketing: therein lies the answer to going beyond content marketing and value-adding as we discussed above.
Today, many companies have already abandoned the feature sell and are focused on storytelling and jabbing. You can’t scroll past your feed without seeing great stories and value-adding content — listicles of tips (NY Times’ Smarter Living section), tear-jerking ads (Thai ads) and witty product placements (Old Spice, Squatty Potty).
These are great practices, but to stand out from an already saturated market requires you to transcend being interesting and viral, and be aspirational instead — think “values” rather than “value-add”. For more, Buffer has a great piece on mission-based marketing.
Marketers should aim for a situation where people become customers because they want identification; to be associated with the value that the product embodies. Apple has mastered this art; creative professionals often gravitate towards Apple products associated with creativity. Besides Apple, brands to watch are Patagonia with their unapologetic environmental cause, or gear company GORUCK which strives to build teams and strengthen communities with military-inspired products and events. If companies can fuse their mission with great jabs, they will create massive engagement.
To get started, business should re-examine their mission and values, and see which elements should be downplayed, and which can they double down on — in other words, accentuate the values that make your business unique. You can also consider targeting a smaller, but more passionate audience segment as well — a small group of loyal fans beats a large, unengaged audience any day.
Another framework to use is Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey. In a nutshell, Campbell says all stories follow the same pattern (of having conflict, resolution and resurrection). Similarly, think about what part your product plays in the story of your customer. Or can your customer be a hero? For example, Patagonia suing Trump brings to mind the epic of David vs Goliath — a company taking on the President. How can you weave in story elements into your marketing message?
Today, attention is scarcer than ever. In a world filled with cognitive misers, It’s getting harder for even anything to catch our attention. Although consumption patterns are always changing, psychology does not. It’s always possible to make others care, as long as you speak the right language.
What do you think? Are businesses today messaging the right way? Are there new ways of making others care? Is the old, feature-based method of selling still relevant today?
