Customers' Lives Are Stories, Help Customers Write Personal Best Sellers.

AARP The Magazine (June/July 2024) has an illustrated composite case study, "How One Woman Found Happiness in Midlife – and You Can Too" [https://www.aarp.org/home-family/friends-family/info-2024/find-happiness-joy-in-life.html] about yearning for opportunities, problem solutions & preventions.

The print version is "One Woman's Search for Happiness" with the subtitle: "Mary's floundering gives way to flourishing after applying some practical, research-tested midlife interventions." While coping with problems, "Mary" considers pleasure expenditures, investment planning, a medical diagnosis & learns flourishing is a way of being, not a destination.

In WHAT GOT YOU HERE WON’T GET YOU THERE, Marshall Goldsmith wrote about Success Delusion. Goldsmith might figure Mary discovered what got her HERE won't get her THERE. She didn't have success delusion, but wondered what prevented success (arriving THERE). She improves herself & circumstances with guidance.

People continue standard methods that seemingly bring emerging benefits, until 'What the __ HAPPENED?!'

Discounters push manufacturers for cheaper product versions, which people use to repeat previously "successful" actions. Between people's initial perceptions & goal achievements, circumstantial changes can invalid some preparations.

It's like hikers preparing for a light snowfall & getting stuck in a blizzard. During a stormy hike, 5-foot-tall people get less wind resistance than 6-footers, who see over snowdrifts. Various factors affect whether perceived “superior” attributes are functional from start-to-finish.

It’s confusingly frustrating when similar efforts bring different people superior or inferior results.

Mary learned to plan & adjust her life journey for experiences, not destinations. Destinations might be misperceived or unreachable.

David Hochman’s article explains behavior changes are necessary for improving conditions. David wants people to realize help requests are gestures of confidence & strength.

Explain how your guidance decreases customers' vulnerabilities & increases confidence. With fewer/smaller vulnerabilities, customers can refine strengths & fulfill opportunities. Help customers define limitations, then prevent limitations from growing into weaknesses. This assurance helps customers identify & respond to threats.

Help Customers Reach Beyond Separate Benefits By Building Advantages.

Beneficial modules & interdependencies become advantages as people combine products & methods. Advantage offers inspire people to confidently discover & build strengths.

Analogy: Carnival games have big Teddy Bear prizes for skilled winners. Unlucky players might get small consolation prizes. In some games, people win & trade multiple medium-prizes for top-prizes.

Discounters’ customers may feel inadequate when inadequate products fail. Urge people to stop accepting minimal cheap product results as consolation prizes. Results are suboptimal when people don’t know how to: evaluate conditions & resources; plan accordingly; choose products & do methods.

Customize products & methods offers & help customers understand how to fill gaps between HERE & THERE.

Specialist retailers can explore how to increase functionality & coach customers to create & expand functional hope. If project steps or tasks feel difficult, functionally hopeful people reassure themselves while adjusting product choices & techniques.

Since perfection is hard to create & preserve, coach people to create &/or seek progress indicators.

Example: 'After finishing step-1, check how well (result) contributes to (advantage). Emerging results should do/be (unfinished advantage) plus/minus XX% of (finished advantage).' If results seem insufficient, help customers determine if other plans, products &/or methods would improve benefits. After settling for partial advantages, if customers reconsider, could they achieve full advantages later?

Plans, methods & products might bring good, but unneeded results. Establish indicators of whether steps effectively, efficiently increase value, so customers can track real progress & not continue building on mistakes.

Create Personas To Provide Personal Service.

Advantage offers might fit one life aspect, an overlap or transition. People have multiple, daily transitions between aspects & try preserving progress, so certainty makes transitions less stressful. Guide iterative progress & project completion, so customers' minds are settled enough to focus.

The "Mary" persona shows overlapping life aspects. Example: Her medical diagnosis prompted life-choice reevaluations & affected her daughter. They cooperatively enriched their lives.

Customer personas include niche priorities for generating offers fitting priorities &/or settling issues to establish peace. People should feel more peaceful & confident by accepting your compelling advantage offer descriptions. As people purchase from you, they should feel some freedom because you've relieved stress.

Indecisiveness arises from & causes stress. Cooperate with customers to explore needs & desires then compare your offers so decisions are logical & emotionally fulfilling.

In personas, include what customers struggle to finish before bedtime. What keeps them awake? What do they dread as they awake? What causes more stress than before? What doesn't provide as much relief or pleasure as before?

JoHari Window indicates people aren't fully self-aware. Marshall Goldsmith wrote about people's commitments to improve behavior after accepting uncomfortable evaluations.

Subconscious success delusion can include weakness denials & only doing mastered tasks. Without conscious intent, people avoid difficulties because self-improvements & task proficiency require humbling practice. Offer customers resources & criteria for efficacious practice.

Advantage offers decrease difficulties & increase life quality. Promote positives & mitigate negatives by compellingly comparing current/emerging disadvantages with advantage offers. Explain consequences of self-limitations.

Personas reveal current & desired self-perceptions plus social perceptions.

Would customers prefer returning to times/places they felt comfortable or experimenting to achieve progress?

Which personal changes would expedite goal achievements &/or adapting to circumstances? Which circumstantial changes are/have possibly disrupted customers' efforts?

Disruptions can force people to postpone goal achievements when problems worsen without quick action.

Personas include positive & negative traits people don’t recognize or acknowledge. People could self-perceive as always in-command & alert by avoiding contrary indications.

People prefer avoiding stings of accepting negative traits, so consultations reveal how personal negatives & external stings combine into negative effects. Coach customers to do, replace & stop specific actions. Case studies demonstrate products & actions connections.

Develop Personas & Make Advantage Offers Personally Important.

What are niche members’ daily, new & expected problems? What's apt to disrupt opportunities, positive experiences & expectations?

Write personas focused on niche members' thoughts, feelings, biases, desires & needs.

Retailers’ biases are apt to intrude. Product-price list advertisers seemingly think consumers feel compelled to spend. Do you offer Product-X $20 to relieve that “stress”? Or do you offer situational remedies & opportunities?

Big retailers survive by listing familiar product prices at familiar locations. Some biggies fail because they aren't relevant. Personas highlight what's important, so you offer relevant advantages.

Newscasts & conversations reveal serious issues. Which concerns invade customers' lives? Can customers avoid problems or reduce severity? Advantage offers reassure consumers more than Product-X $20.

Offer Example: 'If you buy cheap products because you want bargains, are you reassured by cheapness? While you examine (problem), do you wonder if cheap products are sufficient? After (Store) consultations, you'll invest in advantages & assurance when we check pictures & your descriptions. Let's consider your current resources, including skills, so we'll find the best products & tutorials. Big retailers push cheapness. (Store) specializes in providing maximized advantages, so you'll be reassured. Your life will be more comfortable when you're sure about your chosen options. You'll invest in confidence at (Store).'

You’re Competing for Attention, Interest, Desire & Action (AIDA).

Your messages compete for Attention against internal stress, felt-needs/threats & external priorities. Why should people be Interested in your claims for improving their futures? Which issues do people most Desire to remedy? What makes your remedies high priorities for Action?

Like radio signals in massive static, only the strongest messages breakthrough. Make your offers advantageous enough to breakthrough daily static. Present advantages for specific circumstances instead of pushing products (Product-X $4).

Your messages should express your understanding of niche members' lives & your desire to learn more.

When you learn about local niche members, compare their lives to customers' experiences. Have other niche members partially or totally achieved goals fitting your specialty? What do their results indicate about your & competitors' offers?

Why haven't other niche members bought from you? Do your offers fit in their daily lives & plans? Through daily jungles of distractions, why should people invest limited attention in your offers? Often subjects enter minds by replacing others.

While people are continually distracted, which priority does your offer fulfill? If people struggle to regain previous thoughts, your message is pushed aside unless people perceive differentiated benefits.

Since attention is limited & prioritized, why should people prioritize your offers? Advertising is often a contest of advertisers trying to pry minds open, while consumers perceive vulnerabilities & block perceived manipulation efforts.

Product/price ads attempt to grab money, so people resist. Advantage offers present specialized guidance for choosing & using high-quality products.

To positively influence niche members' choices, explain why your offers are superior to consumers' current experiences & competitors' money grabbing attempts.

Whether people blame themselves, others, conditions or products, each failure adds stress that weighs people down. Urge people to stop carrying that weight.

Failures can bring lessons, but people need encouragement to explore alternatives. Success delusion can be temporarily comforting, but realizing they’ve failed is dispiriting until somebody guides them out of negativity.

Philosophical encouragement might open minds, but people want practical reasons to believe they can achieve real success.

As a specialist retailer, increase customers’ satisfaction by helping with cognitive labor.

Copyright 2024 Dennis S. Vogel All rights reserved.

Your business's profit potential depends on how much value your market niche perceives in what you offer. They won't perceive any value unless they have a reason to think about it. It's why you need effective marketing.

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