Marketing Leverage

Copyright 2006 Dennis S. Vogel All rights reserved.
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Subject: I don't understand some things

Like you, I've also learned a lot of good things from Jay Abraham, but I don't understand some things.

He often says, "The headline is the ad for the ad." It may be profound, but I don't remember him explaining what he means. He's often talked about leverage on leverage. But, maybe I'm thinking too literally, how can leverage be put on leverage?

I may have missed something while reading a Clayton M. Christensen book. I remember he wrote people won't know ahead of time how they'll use a product. Companies won't know ahead of time, who will buy products.

If that's the case, how do products ever get sold?

Subject: Marketing Leverage Author: Dennis S. Vogel
In reply to: "I don't understand some things"

Hi,

I don't remember Jay Abraham explaining these either. The short explanation is: We use ads to attract people to come to our store. These ads ask prospects to come in. Headlines & graphics advertise the ads & "ask" prospects to pay attention to the ads. (The longer explanation is below.)

Clayton M. Christensen answered your question briefly in "The Innovator's Dilemma." It's in his analogy of being an electric vehicle project manager. I don't remember if this is in both editions of his book. You can find it in Chapter 10 of the updated edition or maybe both.

If you looked for something specific about small businesses, it may be why you missed it. He wrote about a big company forming a small division or separate company to make electric vehicles.

Now The Longer Explanations

I'll try to tie these concepts together in a meaningful way.

To add what I've learned from other sources, the task would be to determine which niches might be able to use the innovation.
Determine if the innovation:
1) Improves how they do things, if they can already do what they want.
2) Would help them do what they have trouble doing.
3) Would help them do what they think they need/want to do.
Each of these calls for speculation, so what you find today could be outdated by the time you'd produce a solution or find a supplier. When you market your solution, it may undershoot the need by being a partial or inconvenient solution. People can use the solution, but they wish they'd have something better.

If you anticipate what they'll need in the future, based on what they need now & what they say they'll need in the future, you may overshoot their need. Then your solution would have too many features (with POTENTIAL benefits, but no CURRENT/ACTUAL benefits). Example: If you need a knife, a Swiss Army Knife would overshoot your need to cut or carve. The extra features wouldn't provide benefits, unless you'd use them.

Persuade people to use the products (hopefully to buy or at least use free samples). Then observe how they use the product & get their input about improvement, including which features to eliminate. Extra features add more expense but no extra benefits for particular users. (Many those in the Swiss Army get full use & benefit of each Swiss Army knife feature, but most of us don't.)

I'm taking a chance on this explanation overshooting your questions & curiosity. 8^) But I want to cover what may be your next questions or what I think your next questions should be. I want you to get a full benefit from the short answers I gave.

To Take A Stand, You Need A Place To Stand

I think Archimedes said, give me a lever long enough & a place to stand & I'll move the move the Earth. He may've added the need for a fulcrum.

But what if he didn't have a long enough lever? Or what if he had a long enough lever to reach past Pluto, but no place to stand to get the maximum use from it? If he had many friends, who each had strong levers & places to stand (on Mercury, Venus, Mars & Jupiter), they could move the Earth. If they each put their levers & fulcrums in advantageous places, they could exert pressure at the same time & do the work.

(You may've heard of Rube Goldberg. Or you may've seen the Mousetrap game. Putting things together in strange configurations [somewhat like my explanations {8^{] to do something relatively simple.)

This next concept may seem like a Rube Goldberg. In theory (mine), if you had good levers, but not a convenient place to stand, you could use a lever to push another well-placed lever, which would move a load.

These are examples of leverage on leverage. Since these examples are so confusing, they may show why Jay Abraham didn't explain what he meant.

Leo Burnett advised, "Plan the sale when you plan the ad." "The sale" can be a sales event with discounts. It can also be the act of selling something.

Retail displays, sales techniques (what we do & say, plus how we do & say them), point-of-purchase signs, ads/commercials, referrals/testimonials/ endorsements are "levers." Each should be planned as much as is practical. (Each of these is also something we should test by trying variations.)

What I wrote in another post about blaming versus accepting responsibility for what you can do applies here with a small change. To figure how to change a situation, we need to start somewhere. If we start with a person having a problem, we still need to figure how to induce the person to buy a solution from us. A journey starts with the first step, but it's easier to map a route by starting with what we know. What we know is OUR current situation.

The mousetrap fallacy doesn't address this, it states people will beat a path. If it were true, business failures would be very rare. This is like thinking, "If people don't know I have a better mousetrap, it's their tough luck. I won't tell them. So, it's their fault if my business fails."

It's our job to accept responsibility & beat the path. It's usually easier starting the path from where we are, while we look ahead for a destination.

In general, I recommend finding people who have a problem before finding or inventing a solution. But it doesn't guarantee when we find a solution we'll have enough expertise & production capacity to provide what people need.

Clayton M. Christensen's books for innovators focus on disruptive technologies that were discovered or developed before a problem to solve was discovered. In effect, it means disruptive innovators work backwards. This approach can be used when demand for a product/service is low or nonexistent, as in mature markets/product categories or new product/service categories.

Thank you for using my blog. Please let me know if I should clarify anything.

Copyright 2006 Dennis S. Vogel All rights reserved.
When you compete against big businesses with big budgets you need powerful marketing strategies & tactics. You'll find them here-
https://thriving-small-businesses.blogspot.com/
http://www.voy.com/31049/

Subject: The Leverage Process

As I wrote in the previous post, we know our situation, but since we may not know who will use our products/services, we need to start from we are. As we progress, we hope to have a clearer vision of our potential target market.

After we convince our potential target market to use our products/services, we can find what they like & dislike.

It's a potential target market because they may prefer something else. Even if they prefer our solution, they may not be able to afford it. If they can't afford it, we can determine if we can decrease our costs by removing features they don't want or would seldom use. Or if they need a short-term solution, maybe we can make the product or service result less durable & less expensive.

If We'd Start With Consumers
Though it seems ideal to start with people or businesses & their needs, we have to start with what our knowledge & priorities. To start with something totally foreign would be impractical because the learning curve would be too long & steep.

Instead of producing a complete product/service, we could've started with research, then designed our product/service according to what we learn about people's needs. But by the time our product/service is ready to be marketed, our prospects' needs/desires may change. It'd mean scrapping what we did or find somebody to buy what we produced. So, we could still end up doing the process I described below.

The order of these issues varies according to the situation. If you don't have an answer to each question, find answers to the others. These answers can direct your thoughts to other answers you need. If you start in the middle then work toward each end of the list, it's OK if you get the answers you need.

Backwards May Be Inevitable
These issues are in approximate reverse order like disruptive innovation creators should use.
This list isn't complete enough to fully cover every possible scenario. Each of these issues/steps is a point where we need to apply leverage to "lift" prospects out of their previous situations.

The drawback of working backward is we don't always know--specifically-- where we're going. If we get stuck, we can jump ahead--in planning--to where we think we want to go (where we think a problem exists which our solution can solve). It's like a maze drawn on paper, the starting & ending points are indicated, if we get stuck working toward the end, we can leave our route marked, then work from the end toward the beginning. If our routes "meet" then we're successful.

A Retailer's Current (Hypothetical) Situation/Internal:
When we bought our inventory, which problem(s) did we think these products would solve?
Which other products/services do people need to get a complete solution?
What do we need to set in motion to sell our inventory? What do we need to do so people will buy? Do we have the necessary resources, values & processes?
Why should prospects believe our claims? How will we show these are true?
What has to happen to make people aware of the consequences of their need?
We want people to buy products, how will it happen?
We need to know what other problems our product might solve.

Message Distribution-
We need attention inducing devices, like headlines & graphics, to "advertise" our ads. These should convince people to invest enough time & attention so they'll understand our messages.
We need prospects to notice our advertising messages.
We need to find people who want to & can afford to solve this problem.

Mapping The Potential External Situation:
Message Development-
We need people (who might have that problem) to come to our store.
We need to let them know we have that product/solution.
Does our niche already accept their need & want to solve it?
We need to let them know how serious their problem is & will be. What will happen if it's not solved?
Is solving it a high priority?
What causes the problem? What makes it worse?
We need to let them know their problem can be solved.
We need to get them to admit to themselves, they have a problem.
We need to get them to trust us as people who care about them & have valuable knowledge.
How do they describe their problem? We should use these descriptions in our marketing messages so our sales copy will be interesting & meaningful.
We need to get & keep their attention long enough to inspire their interest, desire & action.
How will we recognize those who have this problem?
Who has this or a similar problem?

Questions For Drilling Down On Some Issues
We need to find 1 or more of these (Knowing more of these will help us solve the problem for the most people.)-
Where they are when they first discover they have the problem.
Where they are most often when the problem recurs/flares up again.
What are they doing most often when the problem recurs/flares up again?
Where they are most often when they feel the strongest motivation to solve the problem.
Where can they most comfortably solve the problem/apply the solution? (Somewhat facetious example- People may feel pain from hemorrhoids wherever they go, but they won't apply a solution anywhere.)
When are they closest to a place where they'll apply/use a solution?
When are they closest to a place where they're willing to buy a solution? (Is it a competitor they're close to? If we can change this, how can we do it?)
Where & when are they closest to a place where they can buy a solution?
Are there typically times when they can't afford to buy the solution?

Taking Action-
How can we help them discover they have the problem?
How can we help them realize they need to solve the problem?
How can we cost-effectively make the solution process easier for our target market?
How can we cost-effectively make the solution process more efficient for our target market?
How can we cost-effectively make the solution process more convenient for our target market?

Easier, efficient & convenient are almost synonymous, so the last 3 questions may seem redundant. But we can substitute whichever words fit the situation. Example: painless, helpful & timely.

You may've concluded a lot of this intuitive, but when people do things without conscious thought, they may miss something important.

Except for 1-step messages, which convince people to buy something without any more sales effort, good ads inspire people to inquire about products/services. After the inquiry, they'll buy what they can afford if they want it.

An ad copywriter needs to achieve AIDA. But it won't happen unless people notice & pay attention to the ad. Good headlines & graphics get a target market's attention & interest by "advertising" the ad.

Thank you for using my blog. Please let me know if I should clarify anything.

Copyright 2006 Dennis S. Vogel All rights reserved.
When you compete against big businesses with big budgets you need powerful marketing strategies & tactics. You'll find them here-
https://thriving-small-businesses.blogspot.com/
http://www.voy.com/31049/