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There’s a sucker at every table

If you’re not sure who the sucker is, it’s probably you. That old poker maxim can easily be applied to the game of advertising.  For instance, could your ads be stacking the deck against you? There’s one way to find out.

Let’s say your ads don’t play out as expected. Was it the ad guy? Maybe. The product? Possibly. Most often, though, advertising failures are the result of weak offers; ones that push what you wish customers were thinking instead of speaking to what’s really in their head.

Who are you talking to?

What’s in every customer’s head? The customer, of course. How ads run astray of this fact of human nature traces back to the 1940′s when Rosser Reeves first popularized advertising a brand’s Unique Selling Proposition. The once-holy grail of USP focuses on the product, isolating what’s special, different, and unique about it.

Effective advertising today, instead, starts with customer needs, speaks the customer’s words, and leads to a Unique Buying Proposition: a power offer. To qualify as a powerful offer it must couple a product or service the customer cares about with an incentive of greater than expected value.

Make a powerful offer

Sam Walton built Wal-Mart with powerful offers. He’d look at a product and ask, “at what price could we sell a lot of these?” The rest is history.

It’s not hard. Look at your products. Pick one customers already want. Ask the Sam question: “At what price…..?” Then, promote it with guns blazing. Just make sure you have plenty to sell.

Price is one kind of powerful offer. Remember, the key ingredient in a powerful offer is the customer’s perceived value. That’s why it also works for added services, locations, ease-of-use, or whatever lights a fire for your customer.

Unique Buying Propositions lead to powerful offers

  • How could we package services so we can sell a lot of them?
  • Where could we locate the store to sell to a lot of people?
  • How can we make it easier for customers to buy a lot of these?
  • And, of course, at what price could we sell a lot of these?

Powerful doesn’t mean cheap

Apple products aren’t inexpensive, but their offers must be powerful. Its smartphone marketshare surpassed Nokia. It’s about to eclipse Exxon-Mobile as the most valuable company on earth.  Maybe that’s because Apple asked questions like: “What products would make life easier for a lot of people?” And, “How can we sell a lot of them?  Powerful offers produce profitable results.

The answer is standing in front of you

You see customers every day. Watch them. Study them. The better you understand their UBP the better you’re equipped to make a powerful offer. Otherwise, you’re not buying advertising. You’re paying to hear or see your name. Doesn’t that seem a sucker’s bet?

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Never argue with a drunk

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People will teach you a lot, if you let them. One such life lesson, dealing with difficult people,  came my way 35 years ago in that building behind me; our family restaurant at the time, Grandma’s Kitchen in Whitefield, New Hampshire. It’s a lesson worth sharing because advertising will bring the occasional knucklehead through your door too.

First, let’s wind the clock back to the bicentennial year of 1976. I was 17. Had a car. Had money. Had time. Had some sketchy ideas too. Get the picture? Mom did too. That’s why she decided to “hire” me. Instead of summer fun with friends, I worked at Grandma’s. Overnights: 11pm-to-7am. Six nights a week. All. Summer. Long.

Good things seldom start after midnight

Most nights were deadly quiet—until 2:30 a.m. That’s when the bars closed. Headlights flooded the parking lot. Customers poured in, filling the room with 90 minutes of bedlam: Partially, fully, and excessively lit party people all wanted food and fun on the way home. Food they found on the menu. Fun they found in messing with me.

Years later, I still apply the lessons learned in those many nocturnal skirmishes. Chief among them: never argue with a drunk.

Okay, drunk isn’t a nice word. But, how else do you describe rude, abusive people trying taking advantage of you while irrationally believing they should get away with it? I’m sticking with drunk. It works better in mixed company other equally appropriate words.

Five ways to deal with a drunk

I’m betting you deal with the occasional drunk, too. We all do. Whenever I encounter one, though, my Grandma Kitchen experience sure comes in handy.

1. Don’t take it personally
People are who they are. It’s not because of you
2. Don’t bother reasoning
Rationality in the absence reason is rhetorical quicksand
3. Focus on the outcome
Don’t get sucked into the moment; stay on course
4. Make them the winner
Put what they want on the other side of what you need
5. Remember why you’re there
Rude dollars deposit in the bank just like polite ones

Returning to the scene

This summer my kids and I went on a thousand-mile New England road trip that took us past Grandma’s Kitchen. Even though Mom sold it long ago and moved west, I still had to take my kids in for dinner. While it’s changed a great deal, it’s still the same to me. It’s where I learned how to deal with a drunk and still get my job done. Thanks, Mom.

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Can it just work for you too?

Apple doesn’t build computers, mp3 players, or even phones. They provide something more meaningful: human connections. Instead of merely selling a device, Steve Jobs and company connects us to what we care about: music, people, memories. How they do is easy to see, if you know where to look.

In his Worldwide Developers Conference keynote address,  Jobs gave up the magic on a single slide. It wasn’t quoted in any news story or blog I could find. Yet, it succinctly conveys both what Apple does and how you can drive focused excellence in your company.

Hidden in plain view

After parading their latest innovations past the convention of software developers, Jobs summed up what makes Apple Apple. Echoing three words on the slide displayed two-stories high behind him, he said “It just works.” Well, duh.

Amazing things are often hidden in plain view. In this case, “It just works,” is more than a catch phrase or summation of the presentation. It’s a filter for screening out what might not fit the brand. It’s a lens that focuses innovation. It’s a measuring stick. It’s Apple’s North Star.

It works even when it doesn’t

The elegance of this simple phrase is how it both defines what Apple stands for and what they stand against. When MobileMe, a collection of online tools,  crashed and burned on launch, Jobs threw himself on the sword. He admitted it didn’t measure up to Apple’s standards—without elaborating on them specifically. Now you know: Mobile me didn’t “just work.”

AppleTV didn’t just work either. Only after Apple replaced the original hard-drive version with a hockey-puck-sized device that streams instead of stores tv shows and movies did AppleTV meet their standard. The original was clunky and hard to use. The new one plugs in and, of course, just works. It works so well, cable operators may be seeing a threat in AppleTV.

What works for you?

Technically-oriented people (aka geeks) may prefer devices with steep learning curves. Cleaving onto cantankerous operating systems, they look down their noses at Apple’s ease of use. No worries. There’s a market for devices that don’t just work, too. As they say, that’s why there are both blue cars and red cars.

Apple’s lineup is sheathed in so much cool, it’s easy to overlook their underlying philosophy. Three simple words shape everything they do: it just works. What simple words shape what you do?

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The triangle of combustion: why websites aren’t advertising

Ask any Boy Scout how to start a fire. He’ll tell you it’s a triangle: fuel, oxygen, and heat. Get enough of all three and you get a fire.

There’s a triangle of combustion like that in advertising: message, delivery, and engagement. Getting that triangle right will light a fire under your sales. Message is fuel, delivery is oxygen, and engagement generates heat. Ignition comes at the moment of conversion, when a visitor becomes a customer.

What a website isn’t

You may have a smokin’ hot website. But, your website isn’t advertising. Advertising is intrusive. Advertising intercepts your customers, catches their attention, arouses curiosity, speaks to their desires. Your site doesn’t start that fire. It feeds it.

Yes, your message lives on your site. Yes, your site engages customers. But, you can’t optimize a fire that hasn’t started. That takes advertising.

If your site carries through on the advertising message but isn’t producing, look beyond the site. Look at the advertising itself. A website can’t catch someone’s attention from the side of the road. It’s not going to pop up on the 10pm news. It’s doesn’t ride along in the car.

Optimize with advertising

I ran a campaign for a retail client recently that proved the strength of these three legs. Even though we’d just relaunched their website, not one dime went toward ad words or paid search. Instead, we advertised: tv, radio, banner ads on newspaper and local TV station websites.

But, I left something out. The ads didn’t include their phone number, address or website. Instead, they said, “you can find us.” Upon hearing “you can find us,” people understood that meant, “Google us.”

How did it work?  Traffic went up 13x. Record setting sales weekends—for the tenth year in a row.

Metrics measure combustion

Your website’s metrics have a seductive quality. Tracking visits, page views, bounces is fascinating stuff. It’s also distracting.

Properly applied, metrics measure how well site visitors become customers. They indicate when your triangle generates sales combustion.
What metrics don’t measure is advertising effectiveness. Using web metrics to measure advertising effectiveness is like calculating sales by counting cars in the parking lot.

Help customers connect

Stoking a fire means making it easy for customers to connect the legs of your triangle:

  • Message: Does yours articulate the customer’s felt need?
  • Delivery: Do you reach out and touch new customers with that message?
  • Engagement: Is there a clear destination for the message on your site?

Remember, every tool has its purpose as does each leg of the triangle. Expecting one part to do another leg’s job weakens all three. Giving each appropriate attention will put you on the path to the warm fire of optimized advertising.

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