Great Marketing Offers Advantageous Bridges Between HERE & THERE.

(NOTE: In 2022, I analogized Marshall Goldsmith’s "What Got You Here Won't Get You There". People might not know/remember/admit how they got HERE if they used cheap stuff &/or misguided/unguided methods. We’re extending this & the extraterrestrial analogy, since people feel forced out of familiar, possibly settled situations.)

“The Secret to Great Marketing Is...”by Cory Treffiletti [https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/413828/the-secret-to-great-marketing-is.html] Cory wrote & expanded things I’ve covered: Marketing should educate, not sell, It must reach them while thinking about situations (aka THERE) where your product can fit.

Forced to Leave HERE Before Fully Studying THERE.

In your retailing story (your HERE), you've developed functional hope for profitably advancing (reaching THERE).

Recruit niche members to participate by describing how you’ll help customers achieve/reach their THERE. As you transition HERE to THERE, how does your progress help customers: 1-Cope in their HERE; 2-Manage disruptions during their transitions; 3-Maximize arriving THERE?

Sensory perceptions/assumptions (”seeing is believing”) should require realistically perceiving factors contributing to successes/failures. How do you help customers determine criteria for creating/preserving benefit combinations? Will their testimonials/case studies demonstrate recognizable conditions & opportunities to inspire niche members to buy advantage offers?

Compelling descriptions should be like sampling almost-ready soup, people’s hunger lingers, but appetite & hope justify waiting. Soups (advantages) are ready when specialist retailers & customers collaborate to customize recipes.

Help niche members observe, then start mentally “owning” advantages with pictures, testimonials & cases. Compelling descriptions convert members' observations/experiences into realizations & preserve inspirations/aspirations.

Guide customers, so they aren't frustrated by concluding desires are out-of-reach. You don’t have to think for customers but ease their cognitive labor by applying insightful facts to their goals. Suggest satisfaction criteria to guide customers’expectations.

Offer Example: ‘(Store) consultations create functional hope & customers feel free to pursue happiness. Please, don’t tolerate frustrations. Too many discounters’ customers buy cheap stuff made for big profits, not customers’ benefits. When desires feel like unrequited love, people might deny or squash feelings, which brings deeper troubles. Let’s review necessities for your goal, so your current & new skills plus top-quality products will create functionality & restore hope.’

After studying causes/effects of unfulfilled desires, customer consultations reveal situational specifics to sufficiently assure customers, so they justify purchases & efforts. Explore differences between desires & motivations to learn how to shape actions.

On your website &/or appended to offers, you can test “About Us” pages/stories including how you develop advantage offers. Customers' life-stories might cross some of your chapters, so you can guide customers’ journeys. Whether rapport springs from being “one of us” or deep empathy, customer integration inspires assurance of fulfillment.

Establish affinity with intermittent "pages" expressing your understanding & desire for deeper comprehension. As it expresses integration opportunities, your story becomes a page-turner as niche members are motivated to obtain & sustain higher values.

Your Story & Advantage Offers Differentiate Your Store.

Comprehensive values warrant Awareness-Attention-Interest-Desire-Action (AIDA). Whether consumers enjoy or dread shopping, your empathy brings more value, so shopping is an investment.

Big retail benefits are like paragraphs compared to your advantage offers which should become chapters in customers' lives. Customers want assurance of functionality in lives like theirs & hope of applying insightful facts & skills.

Retailers should lead & equip customers to finish “missions” documented into stories for comparing past/present benefits in others’ stories. Multiple comparisons prompt progress even if people didn’t consider their efforts to be experiments.

Members endure uncertainty about their needs, local conditions & wonder if you’re motivated by profits or empathy. Demonstrate how you integrate customers’ goals with your story/mission, including community-building & customer-empowerment.

As customer integration attracts members seeking your niche-version functional hope, you can invest more in insightful knowledge to increase value. Big retailers get millions, donate hundreds/thousands but are impersonal. Display your priority of individuals’ & community wellbeing.

Though your donations are comparatively smaller, your specialized insightful knowledge adds value to products & money. Financial benefits become advantages via actions money alone can’t execute.

Stressed customers might feel stuck until they perceive functional hope in your advantage offers as bridges between their HERE & desired THERE. So, your ads shouldn’t be only products, prices & contact information.

Consumers have multiple responsibilities & would feel irresponsible to risk resources without functional hope. Many advertisers don’t promise value. In effect, they push business cards & product lists, then claim advertising doesn’t work.

Customer Integrators Help People Explore & Tame Risks.

Extraterrestrial Analogy (Continued): As unconcerned citizens chose excessive pollution, environmentalists studied optional planets. Group-1 had explorers & initial settlers who traveled toward a distant planet after evaluating necessary supplies for a trip.

The flightcrew explored/adjusted routes while settlers reviewed emerging geological & social observations. Settlers prepared for living condition necessities & peace offers for residential cooperation. Studying while approaching, they compared their resilience with new situational resilience criteria. They're resilient in home-planet conditions & short orbits. They must create/customize resilience while experiencing unfamiliar risks & developing preliminary criteria instead of improvising.

With specialized in-depth study, groups can coach members while comparing expectations & evidence.

On Earth, specialist retailers should apply product specifications to customers’ expectations & evidence.

Like Earthlings' testimonials/case studies, if Group-1 reports results, future groups could adjust training methods & choose supplies based on updated expectations. Without adequate expectations, people could be motivated by desperation. Their instant, unplanned actions would disrupt thoughts & decisions. Fighting, fleeing &/or freezing could be appropriate only if planned & timed well.

Each Step/Day Is Another HERE.

They should consider plan adjustments necessitated by differences between each daily HERE & changes to the probability of arriving THERE. Away from home, changes are stranger & seem faster. When Group-2 reached halfway, THERE wasn't there! The star remained but did the planet burn-up or eclipse?

Group-2 reconsidered what's known & unknown. Apparently, Group-1 had appropriate supplies for the distance. Was their ship hit by asteroids? Was it pulled into a blackhole? Did they go beyond halfway & can't communicate?

Did they land early & disappear with the planet & couldn't send the ship back for more groups? Is Group-1 alive? Do THERE occupants intake/output air, liquids & solids like extraterrestrials? Is life-support impossible?

Without direct observation or contact, extraterrestrials won't/can't know if THERE is suitable until arriving. Group-2 can bring a little more supplies & stop about halfway to seek Group-1. If Group-2 goes beyond halfway, more evidence might be available but finishing the trip would be necessary because more than halfway requires more than half of supplies.

Group-2 doesn't know where THERE went. Eventually they may realize THERE is on the other side of the star or hidden in direct light. Could/Should they justify continuing?

Bedeviled Earthlings dread choosing devils they know over devils they don’t. Though unfamiliar options could be mostly positive, some prefer a modicum of familiarity despite probable negatives or they deny what’s wrong.

Coach Lou Holtz: “Don't tell your problems to people: 80% don't care; & the other 20% are glad you have them.”

Retailers might be perceived as personally unconcerned while professionally desiring sales. Customer integration increases niche members’ functional hope when they believe they can maximize benefits because somebody cares enough to help.

Lou Holtz: "I follow three rules: Do the right thing, do the best you can, & always show people you care". "Life is 10% what happens to you & 90% how you respond to it" Knowing how to respond doesn’t help without compatible resources. People’s functional hope can expire if knowledge, experiences &/or observations are incompatible with available resources.

Coach John Wooden began seasons by teaching players to properly put on socks & tie shoes. Small, foundational detail mastery is essential for success, including preventing blisters & ensuring comfort. He instructed how to smooth sock wrinkles, tighten & double-tie laces.

If players misstep because of foot pain, worse injuries could end career-plans. Lessons might seem unnecessary, unless people aren’t focused on problems enough to evaluate whether causes & effects are consistent. Without some predictability & guidance, prevention is difficult.

Cause & effect evaluations become difficult without consistent preparations/precautions to limit variables. What contributed to higher productivity? Why did (problem) happen/become more severe than before? External factors add/reduce value but without internal consistency, “evaluations” would be guesses.

Jay Abraham applied this to testing advertising/business practices.

Distracted people might imperceptibly change productive habits &/or start increasingly disruptive habits.

Without conscious focus, people might not notice interrupted habits & fret about slightly varied results. Cumulative variations can massively disrupt results without people noticing how/when. If inattention/neglect/forgetting bring troubles which people misinterpret or don’t perceive, they might claim success & figure precautions aren’t necessary. Partly from pride, people probably claim sufficient wisdom.

If people accept coaching, they might expect big facts & deep wisdom. It’s easy to reject basics as unworthwhile. Some basics are foundational for projects. If details are disregarded or unlearned, foundations are weak.

Customer integrators use details to create & maintain structures on firm foundations.

Copyright 2026 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/