February 24, 2023
Hi hey.
I was in a meeting this week with JoAnne Latham, Director of Account Strategy at Overit. I'm working with JoAnne to build top-line messaging for a new, chewy campaign that requires a labyrinth of value propositions for different audiences. The puzzle of working it out is what's so fun, but we were at the point where the puzzle felt like a knot.
It's tricky. Summarizing a big thing into a few words to reach everyone. Or, it felt that way until JoAnne reminded me:
You can’t sell what someone doesn’t want.
Our job is not to rally everyone.
Our job is to rally those who want to go where we're going.
* * * *
The more time I spend with smart people like JoAnne, the more it convinces me that marketers overcomplicate things. We struggle to make audiences care because instead of crafting a tighter message for a smaller group, we misspend our time and dollars talking to people who will never, ever be interested.
When you come from the right place, making someone care becomes a simpler, more-filling 4-ingredient recipe.
Step 1: Know your people.
Most people like free food. Most people think baby animals are cute. Most people like to listen to music.
Knowing what most people think is unhelpful because you are meant for only some people.
Your audience might prefer expensive, Michelin-star meals. They may choose to eat baby animals rather than pet them. They might feel overwhelmed by music.
The more specific you can be when identifying your people, the easier it becomes to exist just for them.
Step 2: Know what they care about.
How do you know what someone cares about?
- You ask them during 1:1 conversation.
- You use focus groups and questionnaires.
- You read what they type into their search bars.
- You observe what they talk about on social media and in online communities.
- You read the questions they post on Reddit and Quora.
- You read their comments on relevant YouTube videos.
- You read Yelp and Amazon reviews about your product and your competitor’s product to understand what they liked and didn’t like and what matters.
- You read book reviews on your topic to understand what people need to learn and what they already know.
- You read what they read and go where they go.
You learn what your people care about by studying them. This is easier and more scalable when you stop talking to most people and focus on your people.
Step 3: Know their language.
The comments, questions, wants, and concerns your audience shares through the above sources identify their language. Repeat those words back to them in your marketing to build familiarity and show you understand their problem.
We muddle this up A LOT as marketers. We love creating our own language. We make a Product out of the problem-solving process so that we can brand it and put a logo on it. We design a patent-pending approach named after our CEO that no one knows to display our expertise and manufacture a reason why someone should choose us.
In doing this, we create a framework for using all of the wrong words.
Your people never asked for the Sally Snackpack PRO or the Betsy Bentobox Approach. They were looking for school-approved, allergy-free snacks. You can't make them care by giving them something they never asked for.
If your marketing uses the words you made up vs. the words your customers recognize, you're quite literally speaking in a different language.
Let your marketing sound like your people.
Step 4: Be clear about how you help.
How do you help your people get what they care about?
You may help by:
- Building a better burger: providing a product or service that is simply better than they can get anywhere else.
- Building a better experience: making the process easier and more seamless or helping them feel more seen and understood.
Sometimes a better burger is what’s most important. Sometimes it's that you answer the phone when they call or that they know you care about them and their business. You don’t always know what matters most, but if you've put real time into Step 2, you're more likely to get it right.
The longer I do this, the more it feels like we are the ones who make the process of speaking to a single person seem complex.
There are always new tools, methods, and technologies that distract us from what it means to truly understand our audience and the value we offer them.
But you can make it simple again.
Do the four steps outlined take time, skill, and mastery to match the right message with the right person? Absolutely.
But if you want to make people care, the answer isn’t to get better at selling.
It is to get better at giving your people something they care about.
