Marketing is ‘Work that matters for people who care’ not spamming.
What do we make? We are trying to make a change happen.
Does that mean better? Better is always in the eyes in the customer.
Enemy of better is average.
Don’t yell at everyone about your average product.
Minimum viable audience.
Make something better for people who need something better.
Seek minimum viable audience, the smallest audience you can live with.
Water kiosk in India will only sell fresh water to people with blue buckets - they say it’s for health but really it makes everyone carry a blue bucket which then advertises their water.
The water kiosk brought around microscopes at schools to show that the water they normally drink is full of bacteria.
Status roles - all that WWE wrestling is about. Same is true of politics, business.
Threats to status - what will happen if I don’t get this tool.
Direct marketing is measured. Spend 100, get 200 back.
Don’t measure things that don’t matter - Twitter followers don’t matter, it has nothing to do with value of brand. Measure ad click throughs, they matter.
Brand is trust - not just a logo.
Super bowl ads, people pay a premium to reach the average people.
Ads cannot easily measure results from these ads. They only get poor measures which gives them false or misleading information.
New ideas to the market - about 1/6 people buy it because it’s new. Early adopters.
This doesn’t mean the uptake will go up forever. There’s a difference between those who buy things because it’s new, and those who buy things because it works.
Positioning as a service.
People cannot possibly remember every attribute of what you make.
Position yourself away from everybody else.
Mandatory education almost never works.
You learn when you’re engaged in the journey (knowing about your favourite hockey player).
Earn enrolment.
I see you as the kind of person who would like to come on this journey with me. Make people want to go on this journey with you.
Your product is not going to spread because you want it to. It will spread because the people that you serve want it to.
Users will tell others.
Build it to share, it is way more likley that it’ll be shared.
Heath - add sharing functionality.
More isn’t the point, better is the point.
Question time:
If the wrong kid brings in a yo-yo, then it doesn’t take off. If the right kid brings in a yo-yo every other kid wants a yo-yo.
Google vs Bing. People preferred Google, but they did swapped the logos and people still preferred Google even though it was actually Bing.
Seth was on a plane which had an emergency landing. The plane had to stay at that airport which was 30 minutes drive from the proper destination for 3 hours. He booked a car and then stood up and asked if anyone wanted a ride. No one took up his offer. He thinks if he had stood up and handed out cards and said ‘anyone who gets a queen gets to come with me in the car’, he creates scarcity and probably gets people to come with him.
Survey - people who answer surveys who have a chip on their shoulder or nothing better to do. They don’t give good information. Call customers directly instead, or speak to them when you have the opportunity.
Sony had a bunch of people test out a radio. They all said they liked it and were asked how much they should sell it for. People said ‘50-100 dollars’. As they finished they were offered $20 or a free radio, they all took the $20. So they didn’t really think the radio was worth that much money, they lied. Their behaviour is more interesting than the information they gave.
1 star reviews are not helpful. 1 star reviews mean ‘this isn’t for me’. More noise than information.
Creating tension is really easy, just be silent. Create tension online with scarcity and fear of loss.
You can’t beat amazon, don’t even try.
Psychographics are how you act, what you want, what you believe. Psychographics are worth 100x more than demographics (your age, sex, location).
Pay extra for the psychographics you seak.
Pay more for the specific people who will buy your product.
Opinions don’t matter, test your results.
If you A/B test enough, you will build a porn site. Numbers of clicks are not always the best measure as you can attract the wrong people.
If you sell SEO, you either have to convince people who already use SEO to come and use your product, or convince people who don’t use SEO that they need SEO.
First is over-rated when it comes to bringing an idea to the table, relevant, generous and persistent matter way more.
AirBNB said no to business people and people looking for bargains to begin with. The tailored for a specific segment of the market. The built something of destinction. There’s a certain psychographic that they target - delight them, then they tell their friends.
Beer. The number one selling beer in the US is ‘other’. So the long tail of beer brands outsells the big players. That’s why it pays to stand for something.
Facebook and LinkdIn grew so fast because it works better if your friends are using it. So people shared it. That’s why there are fax machines, so tell everyone you know so you can send faxes to them. SAAS - certain varieties are better if other people are using it (like Slack).
If you have a price of software that will give your business a competetitive advantage that will go away if your competitors get it too, you won’t talk about it. Software like that doesn’t grow well. To make that kind of software work you need to pick one player per industry and charge a huge premium. e.g. Nutrasweet had a patented sweeterner, instead of going to everyone and selling it, they contacted Coke and Pepsi and offered an exclusive deal and let them bid against each other.
Redbull became huge overnight because they paid bar tenders to sell vodka and redbull to high status customers in a public way. They sponsered sports events that had no sponsers, so they were seen as early adopters.
If you take your ad and a competitors ad and swap the logos. If you can’t tell the difference then you haven’t done anything good. Feels safe but doesn’t get you where you want to go. Write ads that some people won’t like that are memorable.