There’s no shortage of customers out there, and even more so in the digitally connected global village we call home. You can literally sell to the world. That’s the good news.
But (there’s always a ‘but’), it comes with a cost: increased competition. You can sell to the world, but so can everyone else. You’re now competing with businesses across town and on the other side of the planet. That’s a lot of choice.
The most successful among us – no matter the product, service, or industry – have found a way (or team with a marketing guide) to reach out and stand out in a crowded sphere. It goes beyond simple marketing. They utilize every tool at their disposal, in innovative combinations, and they provide more than just features to their prospects. They understand customer psychology. They recognize the core emotions that drive us. They take steps to create impressive demand generation for whatever it is they’re offering…and the first step is to get the attention of your prospect.
Hey! Over Here!
But how do we do that? The world – both on and offline – is saturated with businesses trying to get your attention, convince you of their virtues, and make the sale. We’ve become jaded and suspicious at first glance, because there’s just so much out there promising to “rock our world” and “change our lives”.
Features don’t get our attention. Benefits don’t make sales. They’re important, sure, but only after your prospect has decided to purchase, when they need to justify that decision.
It’s emotion and connection that get the attention now. So you need to have to cultivate both, front and center.
Make ‘Em Laugh
Marketing and customer psychology studies have proven the connection between emotion and our buying decisions. We respond to products and services emotionally, and then logically. You need to make an emotional connection if you want to stand out. And while that can be either positive (love, benevolence, excitement, humor, joy) or negative (fear, greed, vanity, anger, jealousy, envy), it’s the high-arousal positive emotions that we respond to strongest and most meaningfully.
To put it another way: make your prospects excited and make them laugh, and you’re really on to something.
A Quick Example with ccScan
There’s more than one way to do that, of course. Exhale Marketing is currently working with ccScan to create lead and demand generation for their direct-to-cloud scanning software. A traditional campaign would include direct mail, email, and possibly a few paid ads on strategically selected platforms. It would highlight the features and benefits of the program, and ideally point out a few ways that it can improve the work lives of its target market.
Nothing wrong with any of that. But just that is going to fall short of spectacular in the modern age.
Instead, Exhale is focused on the positive emotional connection. The campaign includes both humor – original weekly comics about office life and paperwork (see sample below) – and excitement – a weekly draw and $500 grand prize. To enter, prospects need only download a free 30-day trial of the software. This is something they may have done anyway because of the many benefits it provides, but by framing it with two of the high arousal and positive emotions, it’ll foster even more impressive demand generation.
The product is excellent all by itself, but by including humor and excitement in the presentation, it becomes more appealing, more desirable, and more tempting to try right now, at this moment.
It gets them to your door.
Not sure how to do this for your business? Let’s chat about what Exhale can do for you, from content creation to social management, from original illustrations to stunning graphics, from marketing strategy to execution. At Exhale, we can get them to your door.