How to Be the Most Believable Marketer in Your Industry

A short while ago, I wrote a post discussing one of three key marketing principles discovered and well-documented by the Eureka! Ranch (Overt Benefit). I’ve gotten a lot of feedback since, and thought it would be worthwhile to complete my review of all three principles as we should all have them at the forefront of our minds as we undertake our work.

The second principle speaks to the skepticism that all of us feel when confronted with marketing.  Let’s face it… life experience has taught us to believe little of what we hear from marketers.

For this reason, strong statements of benefits – no matter how compelling – fail to move people to action without the help of REAL reasons to believe what you’re saying.

The benefit is what your offering.  The reason to believe is HOW you’re going to make good on the promise.  We simply have to provide both.

As I watch the marketplace today, I find that this issue – the real reason to believe is the greatest weakness of new business concepts.
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How Can We Make Our Prospects Believe Us?

If only they would believe everything we say. How easy selling would be.

After years of being conditioned to believe that marketers are liars (and sales people are worse), we as consumers have evolved into a very skeptical breed.  Sadly, our skepticism is often validated and reinforced by real-word experience in the marketplace.

So what do we do about it?  How do we differentiate ourselves and our message as simply being believable?  If we can figure this out, we’ll sell more (online and offline).  We’ll increase our conversion rates.  And we will be more profitable.

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How We Judge Books… and What You Should Do About It

We’ve all heard the age-old admonishment. Don’t judge a book by its cover.

What a joke.

In a time when we are all subject to constant information overload, there literally is no time to judge a book – or anything else for that matter by anything more than its cover.

Thankfully, it appears that we human beings are intuitively equipped to make snap judgments with shocking accuracy. If you doubt this point, pick up a copy of Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Blink (The Power of Thinking Without Thinking). In it, he shares countless examples of people reaching amazingly insightful conclusions with seemingly almost no data on which to base their positions.

So why do I raise this issue?

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