Introduction

Before we begin, think about the following:

Most of us have enough things that interest us – what we don’t have is TIME. Our attention is limited, and trust is precious to us. When advertising, we ask people for their most valuable resource – time. The first thing that customers give to the company is not money, but ATTENTION. People offer you their attention in the hope that you have what they need. Make sure that what you advertise is worthy of the attention you are looking for.

Let’s get started.

If you want your business to be successful, you need to ADVERTISE what you offer so that you attract the attention of potential customers and awaken the DESIRE to buy in them.

For successful advertising, you need to:

  • Have SOMETHING worth announcing.
  • Find places WHERE people who need it are.
  • Get attention to those WHO need it.
  • Find a way HOW to stimilate the desire for a purchase and
  • Call people to action and tell them WHAT to do.

When advertising, we don’t sell a product, service (or other form of value) — we’re actually selling TRANSFORMATION. A product is just a tool by which we guide the customer to the desired change.

The area of business that deals with this transformation is called MARKETING.

What is Marketing?

The greatest value for people is progress, and marketing encourages people to change and thrive.

Marketing is the one that:

  • Understands the problem that plagues the potential buyer,
  • It understands the change he’s making and
  • It offers a way to make this change successful.

Doing marketing is seeing the world through the eyes of customers – understanding what is important to them and finding a way to help them.

The goal of marketing is not to make a product and then look for people to buy it. The goal of marketing is to find a problem that is plaguing enough people and then find a better way to solve it. Successful marketing team finds this group of people quickly and with as little money invested as possible. The goal of marketing is to:

  • Identify and understand the target market.
  • Demonstrate an understanding of the needs of a potential buyer and
  • Create a sense of TRUST in order to make sales.

Marketing also creates a good STORY – one that is worth telling to others and that will spread among people. Marketing gives customers a reason why they would buy something from a company and why they would brag about their good decision to others.

Where and to whom to attract attention?

To change people, you need to find people who want that change.

If you talk about change to someone who doesn’t want it, you’re wasting your time and theirs. Your goal is to find out who are the people who are looking for change that you offer. These people are called POTENTIAL BUYERS.

The place where your potential customers are actively looking for problem solving is called MARKET. The part of the market that is made up of people that your product can best help is called the TARGET MARKET. The target market is the audience to which you should advertise your product.

You can describe people within the target market in different ways, such as their gender, age, place of residence, language, hobbies, work, income and the like.

To find potential buyers, you need to find out WHERE they spend their time (on social networks, in search on the Internet, at conferences, etc.) and WHAT THEY DO on those platforms. It is also useful to know who is the Authority for them and whose advice they listen to (who influences their decision when buying).

Finally, it is necessary to discover places where potential customers are actively looking for solutions to their problems (such as Google or YouTube).

Based on these characteristics, you will know how to find your potential customers and how to attract their attention.

We use the common values and characteristics of potential customers to create a CUSTOMER PROFILE. This imaginary customer has characteristics that are common to other potential buyers . A customer profile is one that represents the people within our target market as well as the world in which they live.

Figure 1: Customer Profile

The better you define your customer profile, the easier, faster and cheaper you will be able to reach your target market.

However, even when we identify our target market and define the profile of our customer, it is important to know that not every customer is equally OPEN to buying.

Opennes to Purchase

Whichever group of people you take (including your target market) and choose any benchmark you would characterize them by (height, IQ, age – anything), you will see that most people move around the average. 65-70% will be about average, 25-30% will be away from the average, and 3-5% will be complete exceptions (marginal cases). This is called standard deviation.

Figure 2: Standard Deviation

People on the far left side of the curve are called neophiles. Neophiles are those who want to try things just because they are new. They are in the minority, but they are the ones who are most open to new offers.

As we move to the right side of the graphics, we come across more conservative groups of people. They understand that the world is changing and accepting new products, but only if they really work. On the far right are people who don’t want change at all and change just because they have to.

In advertising, it is pointless to attract the attention of people on the right side of the curve (at least initially).

How to attract attention?

Once you’ve figured out what your Target Market is and what your Customer Profile looks like – it’s time to get their attention. How?

You can EARN or BUY attention.

When you know where your potential customers are, you can pay for advertising. You can buy your audience cheaply on Google, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TV, radio, magazine and the like. This audience HAS NO CHOICE but to see your advert. If you have well defined the profile of your customer and advertised your offer to people who fit into this description, there is a good chance that you will attract someone’s attention. If you haven’t, they’ll skip the ad, turn the page, or keep scrolling.

Our brain filters out all the things that don’t matter to us. To attract people’s attention, you need to awaken the feeling that something is IMPORTANT to them. Things matter to us when they are an OPPORUNITY or a THREAT. To present something as a threat, it is necessary to create a sense of urgency, worry, and the like. To create a sense of opportunity, you need to awaken a sense of curiosity, surprise, nostalgia and the like.

You get these feelings by telling a story. This story in advertising has a standard format:

  • Draw attention with a HOOK,
  • Awaken PAIN or PLEASURE,
  • Find a SOLUTION and
  • Invite the buyer to ACTION.

A hook represents a single sentence or phrase that describes why your offer is valuable. For example:

“Lose 10kg in a month without exercising or dieting.”

The awakening of pain or pleasure is actually the awakening of the DESIRE for pain to disappear or to experience pleasure. We do this by identifying the customer with the problem/satisfaction they would like to avoid/experience. For example:

“Are you tired of going to the gym and starving yourself with diets that don’t work? Would you like to shed the extra pounds and restore the line from your youth?”

We offer a solution by showing how our product solves the problem. For example:

“Through working with over ten thousand women, we have discovered a unique way to lose weight that we call ‘fast fit’. Fast fit allows you to lose 10kg in a month by…

We invite potential customers to action by telling them what to do. For example:

“Sign up for the program today and save 60%.”, “Subscribe to our YouTube channel.” or “Share with friends.”

A call to action should allow customers to take one, very clear and short action. The more obvious the call to action, the better.

Here marketers use a variety of cognitive biases to increase desire:

  • The Bandwagon principle – “If this has already worked for over ten thousand women, I’m probably lagging behind others.”
  • Nostalgia“Yes, I’d like to feel like I used to when I had a different line.”
  • Urgency“If I don’t sign up today, I lose my discount. If I don’t exercise right now, I’m wasting my time, and summer is approaching.”

The discipline that deals with writing text in a way that motivates shopping is called Copywriting (About cognitive preferences and Copywriting we will talk about in a separate blog post).

This standard way of attracting attention, waking up desire and calling to action is called MARKETING FUNNEL.

Marketing Funnel

Marketing funnel involves the progress of a customer from awareness to action by:

  • The buyer FINDS OUT about you,
  • RECOGNIZE the value and WANTS your offer and
  • Take ACTION.

When you advertise an offer in your target market, it is inevitable that the ad will come out in front of people who are not interested in your offer. Let’s say you paid for advertising in front of 1000 people. The moment customers see your offer, they will KNOW about you. Does that mean they’ll buy it right away? Probably not. The buyer must also want what you offer, that is, to LIKE you. In the end, he will take the action you ask of him only if he TRUSTS you. (If we imagine :)) It looks like this:

Figure 3: Marketing funnel

In marketing funnel you “pour” attention, and clients come out of it. People who “fall out” of the funnel, for various reasons, are not interested in what you offer (the offer is not for them, it does not coincide with their beliefs, they are distracted, they do not trust you and the like).

If you have responded and the number of new customers is lower than expected – consider the following:

  • Are you advertising your offer in the right place?
  • Are you advertising to the right people?
  • Are the hook and content clear and appealing enough?
  • Is the call to action simple enough?

If you pour the attention of 1,000 people into marketing funnel, it is realistic to expect that hundred people will like you, and that only 10 people trust you. What’s important about marketing funnels is that your advertising costs are lower than the money generated by advertising.

A good marketing funnel makes your customers sellers. Every real buyer will bring another one. Make it easier for buyers to become your sellers by giving them a good story.

The story doesn’t spread because of a good advert. The story spreads because of a good idea that people repeat further.

Most people in the marketing funnel “drop out” because they didn’t feel the desire to buy.

How to awaken the Desire to buy?

People don’t want what you do – they care what they get out of it. They want a feeling that your product will bring them (relief or pleasure).

Consider the following:

When you buy food for your cat, do you ask your cat what taste they want? 🙂 .. Or maybe a brand? Depending on what’s important to you, that’s the kind of food your cat will get. If you want to feel like someone who is attentive and takes good care of your pet, you will buy better quality food. The more you value practicality, you will buy something that is more affordable. You don’t buy cat food, you buy the feeling that gives you that you’re an attentive person.

Your job is not to convince people that they want what you offer. Your job is to help them understand how what you have will fulfill what they want. Think about the END RESULT.

The end result is what customers really want. Maybe your customers don’t exactly need the product you’re offering, but they need the result it provides (people don’t want a 3mm drill bit, they want to make a hole 3mm wide).

The best way for people to understand how your product delivers the end result is through demonstration. However, people are mostly busy and don’t have time to try what you’re offering them (and you may not have the product on you).

There are two ways for a man to experience the end result of what you offer: by TRYING or IMAGINING it.

In an ideal scenario, the customer will be able (and willing) to try what you offer. Then you influence his senses (sight, hearing, smell…), and the brain works so that the easiest way to use the senses to say “I want it!”.

However, there are many situations in which demonstration is not possible. Then we resort to simulation. Here’s how the simulation works:

Imagine jumping in the middle of an active volcano. Does that seem like a good idea? 🙂 It probably took you a split second to answer this question even though you’ve never personally jumped into a volcano or seen anyone as it is.

Marketing relies on this simulation ability to IMAGINE what the end result looks like to the potential customer. We can achieve this through brochure, presentation, video material and the like.

Through these materials, you do not spend time explaining the characteristics of the product you are selling. A good ad doesn’t help customers understand you better, it shows that you understand them.

Conclusion

If no one knows about your product or people don’t care about it — what you create becomes irrelevant. When advertising, we are not in the business of selling products – we sell transformation. Our customers are like heroes who are on a journey and face problems, and our job is to help them on that journey. This journey leads from problem to solution. When advertising, we don’t use customers to solve company problems – we use the product to solve customers’ problems.

For those who would like to explore this topic in more detail, I would recommend:

  • Marketing Management – The most important work of the most influential marketing expert Philip Kotler (link),
  • “This is Marketing” – Excellent author advertising manual Seth Godin (link),
  • “Purple Cow” – Another Seth Godin classic on this topic (link).