A Marketing Scrooge Part 2

And we’re on to instalment two of my Marketing Scrooge tale, where I’m taking a age old classic story and using it to justify my three part rant!

You may wonder why I’m so passionate about this subject – I’m just a virtual PA after all, but the truth is I’ve studied marketing for years academically and worked in the industry for even more years – from big business to small enterprises I’ve seen and worked with all scales of marketing budget and I’m lucky enough to have a creative side along with my practical abilities that means that developing marketing ideas is something I enjoy.

So now that you understand a bit more about where I’m coming from it’s time for a visit from our second spectre… the ghost of Christmas present and this is where I beg you to stop confusing people with lots of words and just get Ronseal about this whole thing.

For those of you who are too young to remember (or were never interested in painting your garden fence) Ronseal had a marketing tagline which read “Ronseal. Does exactly what it says on the tin”. The genius of this is the simplicity, it’s not fluffy, woolly language designed to confuse, it’s telling you exactly what the product is and what it does. That is one of my absolutely key marketing principles for all sizes of business- be Ronseal.

The same is true of your marketing – especially with the sheer volume of messages people are inundated with every day. You need to be able to stop someone in their tracks, by grabbing attention, and tell them what it is you want them to do… all within seconds. I know it sounds simple and very obvious but often people get caught up with the window dressing for their marketing message – too much alliteration, clever language, a plethora of adjectives – all of these serve to reduce the impact you’ll have on your potential customer.

Too many websites, for example, can’t seem to grasp that consumers are short on time and want answers quickly, they want to get in and out and they don’t want to spend precious minutes decoding fancy descriptions in order to understand what you’re trying to sell them. If it’s not easy – to use or to understand – then you are risking losing sales.

Let’s look at an example. You’re selling a paintbrush – let’s get creative with what we call this… ‘the perfectly put-together, plush bristle paintbrush with a smooth handle and non-drop bristles’ . It sounds nice but it’s too long and I got bored half way through writing it, let alone reading it. If you focus on what your customer needs to know then you’ll have a better chance of holding their attention: ‘Non-drop bristle paintbrush’ would be my suggestion.

But. (I know, there’s always a but). You must also consider your customer. In this second example you’re selling a unicorn teddy. The simple approach would be to call it a unicorn teddy and be done with it but you’re appealing to children (mostly, and maybe some charmingly childlike adults) so you have to sell them the benefits of this particular stuffed mystical beast, so, saying something like ‘super soft, fluffy, magical unicorn’ would be more suitable.

You have two really clear examples there of how to create a simple message for two different types of shoppers and do you know why they need to be different? Motivation. The paintbrush is a practical purchase so your message should be driven by benefits. The unicorn is an emotional one so the message should be embellished with emotive, descriptive words. It’s the difference between why it works and why you’ll love it.

So that’s my ghost of Christmas present, the gift of simplicity and understanding what someone needs to hear right now when they are making their buying decisions.