Do you find it amusing? Giggle if you must, but stick with me and I will show you the simplicity and longevity of this sane advice that will change your marketing strategies and tactics forever.

But First, Let’s Look At Nasty Hurricane Andrew
In August 1992, Hurricane Andrew went bananas. Like a drunk on one too many Tequilas, he tore into South Florida with wind gusts of 175mph, redrawing the landscape as he stomped onwards. Approximately 600,000 homes and businesses bore the brunt of his menace.

By the time Andrew left, he had run up a tab of $26 billion dollars and the curses of some very, very angry insurance companies. Andrew had single handedly run up the highest insurance recorded payout in history - if you don’t count September 11.

Many an insurance company looked gloomily into their crystal balls and decided the future was too dicey. So while they grudgingly forked out the costs required to cover the claims, they refused to renew customer policies.

State Farm Insurance Had a Different Opinion

The biggest reason Hurricane Andrew blew the roofs off the houses was because contractors had not anchored them to the frames. State Farm not only happily forked out the policy claims but also paid its customers more to bring the houses up to code.

Amazingly, this insurance company was willing to overpay just to make sure their customers have peace of mind should Andrew or one of his family come visiting.

State Farm Wasn’t Too Far From the Leo Burnett Advertising Agency

Agencies are like turnstiles. Clients come, clients go and it’s the same mantra for employees. Not if you look at the Chicago-based agency called Leo Burnett. At Leo Burnett, over a four-year period from 1986 to 1989, 98 per cent of business came bounding back from repeat clients. No other agency even came close.

Furthermore, this Houdini of advertising has had an almost zero client defection rate for decades. In an almost boring, old fashioned way, they adopt a loyalty based management that keeps clients superglued to them. And it continues to amaze and fascinate the roller coaster advertising industry that can only watch in awe and extreme fascination.

Which Brings Us Back to Webster’s, Doesn’t It?

Now let’s look at how Webster’s Dictionary defines the word Client. It says: A client is one who comes under your care, guidance and protection.

See those words?

It doesn’t say someone you need to get money or make profits from. It asks, even beseeches you to care, protect and guide your clients, like you would with your own child. Everything you do, you do unselfishly for that child. You put your heart and soul into creating a safe, educated environment. You become the guide and the protector. You create a bubble as secure as you can to make absolutely sure they get the very best.

Scary, isn’t it? Especially when you look out there at so many companies, whose single motive is to simply get the sale and move on.

Hurricane Andrew Moved On, State Farm Moved Up

As soon as the brouhaha of Andrew’s visit died down, up came the vultures from other insurance companies. They tried to woo State Farm policy holders with discounts and other incentives. Most of them found doors slammed in their face. Their customers were staying loyal no matter what bait was being dangled in front of them. When the chips were down, State Farm pitched in to help like family. There was no way the customers were going to let down their own family.

Adhering strictly to Webster’s, State Farm had cared, guided and protected its clients. And the clients were repaying that with rock solid loyalty.

Leo Burnett Did The Same With This Hidden Clause…

The same principles apply to Leo Burnett. Like mother hens, they fuss over their clients, doing acts of guiding and protecting that other agencies would never even consider. Its first client, Green Giant, is still a customer some sixty years later. Even back then, founder, Leo Burnett, put in an additional clause that enlarged the standard vendor agreement of buying space, producing ads and maintaining confidentiality.

It read: Counselling with you in regard to your advertising and sales efforts, seeking new ways to improve your advertising, make it more productive, and in every way within our power, working with you to advance your business.

Founder Leo has been dead for over 30 years, but the tradition of caring, protecting and guiding doggedly lives on. Their policy is simple. If a customer runs into a bad year and has to cut back on its advertising - let’s say by 50 percent - Burnett doesn’t automatically cut back on its services by 50 percent and pull half of its management off the account. The company is willing to lose money on an account over the short term.

The inevitable result? Of its 33 clients, 12 have been with the company for over twenty years, and 10 for over thirty years.

Paying Attention to Webster’s Is Not Enough

It needs more. And that more is called sacrifice. Just like with children, you can’t deal with fifty all at once. Each child needs its own time, space and guidance. This requires huge resources, and if you chase every possible client, you’re soon going to run yourself pretty ragged.

The Leo Burnett Agency chooses carefully. It selects its potential clients, as you no doubt will. In 1994, 54 companies invited the agency to talk about a business relationship. Burnett pursued only five.

If your selection of customers isn’t deliberate and systematic, you will run yourself ragged trying to service customers that share neither your dreams nor standards. Invariably, you will find discord and the desire to care, protect and guide will evaporate like moisture on a hot summer’s day.

Care, Protect and Guide - Even If You Have To Send Clients To Your Competition!

If you’re scared, back out now, because I’m going to ask you to do something no seemingly rational business does. That is, you care about your client so much, that you take pains to send them to your competition if you cannot help them.

Hang on. This isn’t as bizarre as it sounds. If you really do care for your clients, you should want them to get the best advice possible. However, no one said you shouldn’t make money off this.

If you sell high end BMWs and you know your client needs a more economical Toyota, you should logically send them over to your competition. However, if you set up a deal with the Toyota dealer, you can not only generate a commission, but also give your potential client a bonus or discount if they go specifically through you.

Hey, those customers are going to walk anyway, once they find their exact needs aren’t being met. And if they get stuck with something they don’t really need, they’re going to be mighty mad once they find out. You aren’t doing yourself or them a favour by making them stick to what you have to offer. Sending them to a competitor that you know will treat them well, endears you to the customer and ensures a tidy profit as well.

Welcome To The Land Of Endless Loyalty

Loyalty at its very roots is exceedingly simple. It’s exactly like a parent-child relationship. While no doubt you will come to depend on technology as your client base grows, the enduring thread that binds it all is the underlying psychology.

Inevitably, you won’t always have a trouble-free course, and both Leo Burnett and State Farm have had stormy days. The only way out of the driving rain is to heartily embrace the care, guidance and protection concept. Let it be your guiding light, far superior to any mumbo jumbo mission statement, leading to exponential profits and devoted clients.

All you have to do to succeed is play Mother Hen.

And say a silent thank you to a certain Mr.Webster.

* Source: The Loyalty Factor by Frederick Reichheld.
**Secondary Source: Me. I worked at Leo Burnett in the 90’s.
*****************************************
Footnote:
This Care, Protect and Guidance, is the same system that PsychoTactics uses for its subscribers, members and clients. Should you come under our wing, we would do everything in our possible power to get you the best knowledge and guidance. This is the whole ethos, the guiding principle of why we exist and why your business should exist. If you adopt this concept in your every day business, you’ll have nothing but unending success.

Ok, now that I’ve got your attention, belt up as we roller coaster our way into the science of how to recognise the power behind the headline. Find out for yourself the precise psychological reasons why headlines entice us so.

How We’re Going to Play the Headline Game
Let me play tour guide. First, I’ll give you three sets of headlines that really work. I’ll identify the trigger in the headline. Then I’ll tell you the psychological reasons WHY they work. Right after that you take over and implement these headlines in your marketing strategy. Comprende? Si? Let’s go.

Psychological Trigger No. 1
Question-Based vs. Statement-Based Headlines
Do you make these mistakes in English?
Do you know where you fail in your marketing strategy?
Is Internet marketing driving you crazy?

Ladies and Gentlemen…Presenting the question-based headline! A headline that beats the living daylights out of a straightforward statement-based headline. When tested, a question like Do you know where you fail in your marketing strategy? gets far more attention than This is where you’re failing in your marketing strategy. Which one would get your attention more: Don’t struggle to pay your bills or Are you struggling to pay your bills?

So why does the brain go wakawaka when faced with a question - based headline? The reason is simple. Questions irritate the brain causing your grey cells to do a neurological dance. The very sight of a question mark forces your brain to want to know more.

Do you have a statement in your headline? You do, huh. Well swap it around for a question and then move to psychological trigger No. 2.

Psychological Trigger No. 2
Problem-Based vs. Solution-Based Headlines
Struggling to get ahead in your small business?
Is your computer’s lack of speed driving you crazy?
Is your marketing strategy missing a vital link?

Now that you know the power of questions, these are double whammy headlines! They not only get your brain whizzing like a wind-up toy, but they also bring to the fore a pain in your brain. If your brain is doing mental aerobics right now, it’s because these headlines are causing you some real grief and you are the precise target audience.

You identify with these problems and are keen to solve them. The brain is fixated with solving problems. It’s a basic survival instinct kicking in. For thousands of years, the brain has been moonlighting.

While its primary function is to make sure the rest of your body parts do what they’re supposed to, its side job is to keep you alive. Therefore it actively goes in search of potential problems you may have, and when it sees one in the headline, it says, “That’s for me!” and goes straight for the problem-based headline.

Yet look at most of the advertising around you. It’s all solution based. You see it, then you don’t. Recycle your solution-based headline into a nice problem-based power pack.

Done it? Ok, let’s go screaming in to psychological trigger No. 3.

Psychological Trigger No. 3
Curious vs. Non-Curious Headlines
Notice the headline for this article? It has the word these in it. These implies there are certain psychological triggers. Now how the heck will you know which ones they are if you don’t start reading this article? Sure you might be the living guru of marketing headlines, but even you can’t be one hundred percent sure.

You’ll take a peek, you think. A small peek. And you do, except it’s a very slippery slide once you get on, my friend.

A skillful communicator knows that he or she must get the curiosity factor to move bag and baggage into your headline. It’s the key to literally sucking in an audience. Then it’s really up to the quality of the content, flow and your ability to keep your audience mesmerised.

Headlines with curiosity work because the brain is intensely curious. Tell a person not to look behind the door, and they want to look. Tell them they cannot have something and they want to know why. Analysis is all part of Mr. Brain’s job.

Every question needs to be answered, otherwise it pounds in your head like a jackhammer with questions that incessantly go Why? Why? Why? (Read the Power of Why) When you create a curiosity factor, you are literally switching on every single light in your customer’s brain.

Headlines with a HOW TO in them are typical curiosity-based headlines. They imply a problem that you might have and need to solve. And to prove my point, look at the next line and see how your eye goes wham, right into it!

How to Construct Headlines Without Making a Complete
Mess of Things
Let me show you how I’d go about it. For instance, I wrote a lot of potential headlines for this article. These were the final four:

1) Psychological Reasons Why These Headlines Work Like Magic
2) Which Precise Psychological Reasons Cause These Headlines To Work Like Magic?
3) Is Your Marketing Strategy Missing These Precise Psychological Triggers?
4) Are Your Headlines Missing These Precise Psychological Triggers?

Let’s Get These Guys on a Couch, Shall We?
1) Psychological Reasons Why These Headlines Work Like Magic
This headline had only one of the features above. It had a curiosity factor. However, it lacked a question and it certainly scored a big zero on the problem factor. Needless to say, it soon backspaced itself into oblivion.

2) Which Precise Psychological Reasons Cause These Headlines To Work Like Magic?
Ooh, this one was pretty powerful. It had the question. It was packed with curiosity, but it kind of fell flat faced on the problem audit. Goodbye, Monsieur Headline.

3) Is Your Marketing Strategy Missing These Precise Psychological Factors?
This one scored on all points. Curiosity, problems and question sat merrily together, expecting me to be as pleased as punch. I was, till I noticed one little discrepancy. It was appealing to the wrong target audience.

This headline would attract people who were interested in marketing strategy not headlines. They would come in, find themselves in the wrong room, drink a glass of wine and sneak out. I needed people to stay for the party. I needed people who were interested in headlines. People like you. Inevitably, I had to refine it just a little bit. And here’s what I came up with.

4) Are Your Headlines Missing These Precise Psychological Triggers?
I personally believe this one was the most powerful of the lot. If it were a guy, I’d let him marry my daughter (if I had one) and give him my blessings. This headline not only encapsulated all the triggers above, but it was precisely positioned. It went for a niche audience and got their full attention.

What’s Abraham Lincoln Got To Do With Headlines?
Abe apparently said, “If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend the first four sharpening the axe.” Your headline is what you need to spend most of your time sharpening.

You see, people are always in their own world, thinking about their own problems. If you don’t snap them out of their reverie, you don’t have the slightest chance of getting them to buy in to whatever it is you’re selling.

There’s Also Another Dimension to this Sharpening Gig
You can’t be totally satisfied with the headline merely if it fits these three parameters. That is the science, not the art. The art is getting inside the brain of your customers. You’ll find that a slightly different headline will bring in as much as twenty to two thousand times better returns without any change in content.

The only way you can know which one works better is to test headlines. Testing isn’t as hard as you think. Put it in an email and send it to a dozen friends and colleagues. You’ll soon get a pattern and probably some valuable feedback. Take it. It will help you carve a headline that will really get your customer’s attention.

Do You Need All Three Psychological Triggers Working at Once?
No you don’t. A headline can work perfectly well with one or two of the above psychological triggers.

In life, three may be a crowd, but in headlines, it’s the more the merrier. Use the power of headlines in your marketing strategy, your PowerPoint presentations, sales calls, emails, newsletters, and even articles like these.

Better headlines mean better bottom lines. Simple logic, eh?

Avis Is Only Number 2. So Why Go With Them?
Years ago, in the rental car market, Hertz was chugging along merrily, with Avis a distant second. With one Problem-Based USP, Avis closed the gap. Their catch phrase, We’re No.2, We Try Harder, ignited the minds of the target audience like a rampaging bush fire. They turned a liability into an asset.

Southwest Airlines took to the skies with a similar message. We’re Smaller Than Everyone Else, they told us, while gently explaining why their service was dramatically better, as a direct consequence of their size. They also turned a liability into an asset.

In 2001, Harley Davidson proudly boasted how their CEO was 38th on the waiting list for the company’s then, new V-Rod motorcycle. And they took pains to describe how each Harley was lovingly rolled off the plant. The waiting period, which normally would be perceived to be a negative, was turned into a publicity coup that burned a stamp of quality and a uniqueness into the brains of every prospective Harley owner.

All of these companies took a cold, hard-nosed look at reality. The superlatives in their business had been taken. Instead they unearthed their USP, in what most people would consider a disadvantage of sorts.

Are You Doing What Sally Did?
Sally is one heck of a real estate agent. Barely six months into real estate, and she’s already forging a red-hot path into the top ten salespeople in the country. While her talents and persuasive powers are formidable, there’s a little something that puts her head and shoulders above the rest of the crowd.

That Little Something Is A USP On Steroids!
If she chose to be unimaginative, Sally’s USP or tagline could have ended up as pretty run-of-the-mill. It could have ranged from a tacky, Residential Properties for every budget, to utterly boring, Getting Top Prices for Your Home. All of which would see her struggling to stand out, in a dog-eat-dog me-too marketplace.

A goody-gum-drop USP would get her nowhere in a hurry. She needed a USP with rocket fuel in its tanks. Something that would reach out and demand your attention without hesitation.

If You Sold Your Home In A Week or less, You Probably Got Too Little
That’s the USP that Sally created. Can you see what I mean? Doesn’t that USP go for your jugular? Sally’s target audience is sellers, not buyers. If you just sold a house, wouldn’t you feel a twinge of regret? What if you were about to sell a house?

Wouldn’t you be curious to find out just a little bit about what Sally does to lasso in a higher return? And wouldn’t you be just a little bit wary if the next real estate agent you met told you that she could sell your house in next to no time?

You’ve just witnessed the psychological power of the Problem-Based USP.

How To Create A Knockout USP For Your Business
Let’s assume you’re in the wine selling business. To own real estate in a customer’s brain, you’d have to do battle with about a zillion other wines. Yet decades ago, Paul Masson cut through the clutter with a simple statement. We sell no wines before their time. With charming simplicity, they turned a negative waiting period into an exploitable advantage.

You too can turn your liabilities into assets. Stop screaming about how magnificent you are, and look for the apparent glitches in your business. Let’s just consider a few scenarios.

Are You Perceived To Be Too Expensive, Slow, Or Maybe Just Too Busy?
When we started our website at PsychoTactics.com, we were faced with a similar dilemma. As human beings, we often disdain simplicity and common sense. The distillation process needed to simplify a concept into easy-to-munch bites is often just seen as common sense, and of no huge intrinsic value.

Taking that liability into consideration, PsychoTactics.com created a USP concept, that stressed the fact that everything was not just old, but at least 5000 years old. In fact, everything has already been tried and tested. That put us in a mould that is totally different from all the new-fangled marketing angles you hear about every day. The liability of common sense was turned into the asset of experience.

Best of all, it turned a problem into a winning USP concept.

The Biggest Reason Why You Should Search For The Hiccup In Your Business Strategy
Finding what makes you beneficially different is a notoriously difficult task. However, just about any client or potential buyer will very quickly identify your weaknesses and liabilities. If it’s a technical problem, you can fix it. If it’s a conceptual problem such as speed or price, it is much harder to fix.

This, however, is the key to your success. The more you try to keep your weaknesses and liabilities under wraps, the more customers will uncover them. On the other hand, take a liability and turn it into an asset. Expose a problem to the harsh glare of the spotlight and transform your frog into a prince.

This brave act will gain the instant admiration and support of your clients, while giving you a USP that others simply won’t have the guts to match.

Can You Make The Leap?
Creating a negative USP is a tricky, dangerous tactic, and one not to be taken lightly. “We’re slow and proud of it!” is hardly a selling point, yet fulfills the requirements laid out in the article. However, if you’ve been struggling with your USP, as many companies do, this is a tactic that may work well for you-as it has with some of the companies above.

It’s time you tickled your customer’s brain with some sharply focused psychological marketing jujitsu. Find the weaknesses and liabilities in your business, carve them into a dynamic USP, and the attention your business has been craving for, will be yours forever more!

Why Dennis Was Fuming
Dennis McConnell was going nuts, literally. He sailed merrily into the office this morning only to find seven unsubscribe messages in his inbox. This was in response to an email he sent out marketing his upcoming Power Photoshop workshops. His merriness took instant flight. His mood transmogrified into the colour of winter, and the sunshine outside didn’t seem to count for much. (Yes, it’s still toasty summer in New Zealand!)

From Angry To Stupid In Twelve Minutes Flat
Like most marketers, Dennis spun around 180 degrees. He pulled the plug on his marketing and decided to send even fewer emails to his subscribers. Why anger them, he thought? The longer he thought about it, the deeper he swam into his turgid pool of fear.

That Is, Was, And Will Be His Big Mistake — And Yours Too!
Why? Let me paint an alternate scenario for you. Imagine you had to give a speech to a hundred people. Say the speech was at the end of the day, and the participants were now tired. Let’s suppose about thirty of them left. Would you give the speech or start crying for mommy, because those thirty walked out?

Without question, you’d still give a stupendous speech, wouldn’t you? Your job is not to focus on the people who are leaving, but on those who have stayed to listen to you.

Dennis was like every one of us. He paid attention to the exit, forgetting there were hundreds of people who were quite happy to receive the information. Are you doing the same? Are you focusing on the goodbyes, when in reality you should focus on those who are sitting tight? Do you even understand the psychology of how people react, when they don’t want to do business with you?

The Psychological Difference Between Unsubscribers And Complainers
Why do people complain? Have you even thought about it? The only time people complain is when they DON’T want to leave. Complaining is their way of communicating to you to spruce up your act. (Read my article, Never Trust a Silent Customer.)

Unsubscribers, on the other hand are mostly either freeloaders (they came on because you offered something free), or they recognized themselves not to be your target audience. You are never, ever, not in a million years, going to sell them anything. They are just keeping you from wasting your time with them. Understand this concept and you are on first base, but wait…we still have to get to second base.

Second Base Comes Before First Base
Look at mum. When she told you to take the garbage out, you complained. But did you ever unsubscribe? You didn’t unsubscribe from mum because she was putting food on your plate. If you knew what was good for that bottomless pit you called your stomach, you’d stick close to home. It’s exactly the same with your customers. If you consistently give them information that is useful to them, they will stick with you through all the marketing messages you send them. Heck, they’ll even buy!

Don’t Be A Bloomin’ Miser With Your Information
You see this article. It’s not a couple of scraps that fell off the table. It is the full story. Every plot, every twist and turn. That’s what has kept you reading so long. If you send out information that’s half-baked, you get half-baked subscribers. You’ve heard the saying, ‘Pay peanuts and you get monkeys.’

Most advertising is fluff. Most marketing tells an incomplete story. And most articles on the internet actually edit for space. If you were selling a product, where would you stop your sales pitch? Would you count the words and say, stop at 300 words? Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? So why is it different when you’re selling a concept? (At this point, you’ve read 718 words and are still reading. Doesn’t that prove the point?)

So How Much Do You Give?
Lots and then when you’re done, heap some more on the top. Would you be happy if I left half the questions unanswered in this article? As an expert in your field, you’re way ahead of your customer. Knowledge grows in leaps and bounds. Why not give it away? Give away tons of the stuff, and you will find within yourself, an unending reservoir of information. If you give away loads, it means you have a lot more. Inevitably, customers will see that and actually pay to learn more from you.

To market to your customer, you must be a brand in their heads. And to be a brand, you must earn their respect. The only way you can do that is to give them the full dope.

Ask mum. How many recipes did she give away? Would you live long enough to see the end of the recipe list, even if you lived to be a hundred? Is she the goddess of recipes, or what?

The Curse Of The Unsubscribe
Sales is a transfer of enthusiasm from one person to another. Say that out loud. Most marketing doesn’t have enough What’s- in- it- for-me factor. Most of it has no enthusiasm, and looks like it was written by someone who speaks Greek as a first language.

If your marketing, advertising or sales pitch is boring, your customer yawns. Several yawns later they leave, unsubscribe or make you a permanent resident on their delete list. If you cannot be enthusiastic in the medium you choose to market, get a professional to do your marketing. This is your bread and butter, don’t muck around with it.

It’s Mindless Marketing Without Technology
Some customers jump ship because you aren’t smart enough to use technology. Too many times, right after a client has attended a workshop, you sell them the same workshop again. How dumb is that? And dumber still is the fact that most people will try to work their lists by physically removing the names.

You cannot afford to make mistakes here. Invest in software that filters through the mess and does it flawlessly, instead of you picking at names one by one on your list. This eliminates mistakes and gives you a clean list to market to. Ergo, customers aren’t mad, and your bank account is jingling away.

Customers Are Waiting To Be Led
Don’t let the unsubscribers worry you. Customers want to improve their lives, their businesses and their careers. If you believe you can do that, tread the intelligent road by educating them in great detail.

Put in all the goodies to make your customers stay. If they’re sick and tired of you, they’ll complain. They’ll say NO. Till then, you keep on marketing to them.

It’s that simple.

It’s Raining 3000+ Messages a Day!
I have a friend. Let’s call him Eugene. Partly because that’s his real name. Eugene positions himself as a pitch manager. Very effectively, he shows CEOs and executives (who make pitches for new and existing business) how they can use simple steps to get a powerful presentation across.

Eugene had a problem that all of us do. His brand (or his company’s brand) was just one of three thousand new messages that bamboozle us every day through various media. To get his name welded in his customer’s brain was like being on a rocking chair. You feel the movement, but you go nowhere. Eugene’s brand was going places, but it was a slow tedious process.

He needed to get some prime real estate in his customer’s brain really quickly and without the benefit of Daddy Warbucks’ deep pockets. All he had to do was get their attention…

13 Boxes. Does That Get Your Attention?
Doesn’t your brain go nuts wanting to ask what is the significance of 13 boxes? That’s the new brand name of Eugene’s company. Can you see that immediately catching your attention? The brain is dying to know the significance of this strange sounding set of words. And it won’t let go till it gets an answer!

In this case the answer is simple. Eugene has a system of 13 boxes in his training process that takes you from the start of your presentation to the final crescendo. The 13 boxes form the structure and the route you must follow to get results.

His company brand could be something like XYZ Training or have his own name (like accountants and law firms do) but why on earth would that excite his customer’s brain?

Another Branding Example called KeyGhost…
Here’s another example of vivid psychological branding called KeyGhost. KeyGhost is a powerful but simplistic device that monitors every keystroke on your keyboard. This spy-like product evades the scrutiny of the unobservant eye. A name like KeyGhost immediately ruffles the brain forcing it to stop what it’s doing. Then it drives all its attention in the direction of this unusual sounding product.

This is exactly what you need. Once you’ve got a spotlight-hogging brand name, you start to own a tiny part of your customer’s brain that is yours to keep forever.

Forever Starts With a Trigger…
A trigger called Curiosity! Curiosity sounds a deafening red alert in every neuron of the brain. The brain is at its curious best when faced with something that seems irregular or uncommon in some way.

If your brand name doesn’t create a curiosity factor, you’re wasting gobs of money to just trying to cut through the communication clutter. The sooner you get psychological exclamation marks into your brand name, the sooner you get the attention you crave for.

But What If You Have a Boring Company Name That You’re Stuck With?
Hey it happens! You inherited the brand name and there’s not much you can do with it without the shareholders going for your jugular. Well don’t fret. First you’ve got to realise that branding is not restricted to just your company name. A process/product that your company has or follows could become bigger than the company itself.

Look For The Power Of Your Processes…
With Eugene, his process was sitting under his nose all along. In the case of 13 Boxes, it’s quite easy to draw up a dramatic scenario of how 13 boxes can get you out of your ‘box’ and give you immense confidence in your presentation skills. In his case, though, the process actually defined the company.

With KeyGhost, it’s a cinch to describe how the hardware works just like a ghost and yet link it back to your keyboard and computer.

You can be an accounting firm with a company name like “Boring, Dead and Co.” and still brand your prize-winning process and call it ‘Goodbye Extra Tax’ or ‘Corporate Loopholes.’

Do you think your clients will see you in a better light? You bet they will! So get going, get out and get working on your brand naming canvas right away!

Nonsensical Names Work Too…
One Red Dog, The Loaded Hog and other such names flout the basic principles of process and logic. Yet they seem to work powerful imagery on the brand name. It’s the story that goes with it that creates a sense of immortality and distinctiveness around the brand.

Even if you choose to have a name that means very little and can drum up a story to match it, you’ve got yourself a winner. Which place would you rather frequent? ‘One Red Dog’ or ‘Joe’s Café?’ With a vivid name you’ve got the opportunity to weave a story — even a story that you made up all by yourself!

Shazaam! It’s Branding With Drama!
Don’t just Mona Lisa your brand. Put some Shakespeare in it as well. Push the limits of your brand name and make it an action tool. For example, 13 boxes could be presented as 13 different boxes placed on a CEO’s desk. Can you visualise the curiosity factor? What if the boxes were different shapes and different colours? Can you see the website name? The t-shirt design? The ad on TV? Can you see how extendable a picturesque brand name can be?

Go ahead; make the effort to Mona Lisa your brand name.

You’ll make Leonardo really proud of you!

Then It Happened…

ABC Wines sold out to another wine company. This new wine company had its own in-house graphic designers. That effectively meant XYZ Design’s income and work flow were severely hit, causing them to scramble for new clients to fill the gap.

“If only I had done what you said,” said the owner of XYZ Design, ” and not line extended into web design and other forms of graphic design and communication, I would have gone down the gurgler too”

Not true.

Line extension doesn’t mean you run just one business or have one product.

No, it doesn’t mean that at all.

Multi-tasking existed long before the advent of computers and the more skills you have, the better off you are in today’s world. However, you have to name each ‘twin’ differently to give it a very distinct identity. When you do that, your client recognises the difference and chooses that ‘twin’ for its own individual personality and character.

How Do You Line Extend Without Line Extending

In the case of XYZ Design, it would have to work in this manner. To all wine companies, they would enter the door as a ‘wine label design Specialist.’ To every wine company in the country and overseas, they would be known, not as XYZ Design but more so, as XYZ Wine Design Specialists.’

This would give the wine companies a specialist to deal with. It would help XYZ Wine Design specialists to build their reputation in the wine industry to a point where if any wine company decided to design a label, XYZ Design would be one of the main contenders.

Now, wine companies don’t do just labels. They do brochures, leaflets, annual reports, websites and tons of other stuff. Your question would be, how can I afford to lose out on that market?

Why You Never Lose Out On The Rest Of The Stuff

It’s called backdoor entry. Everyone (including your competition) is banging on the front door, trying to get in. You, on the other hand, quietly slip in through the backdoor, pick your goodies and slip out.

This is how it works in practice. If you do really good work designing wine labels, it’s almost inevitable that clients will ask you if you can design other associated material. That’s when you introduce your other company, “JKL Graphic Design” and “PQR Web Design”. Same company, different positioning and certainly different brand names. What this does, is it helps clients compartmentalize their thinking. They now think you have specialist groups working on specialist projects taking extra special attention.

This Does Two Things…

1) It helps each of your businesses take on a ‘character’ of its own without affecting the other, much like Air New Zealand is premium and Freedom Air is budget. The public knows they’re one company but still compartmentalizes them into two. You can change the character of each company, and help boil it down to the smallest possible niche, making you an expert in the category.

2) The client sees your multiple brands as different brands. When they need web design services, or when they need to recommend them, they call the web design experts. And so on with graphic design and wine labels or just about anything that you are handling.

Everyone Loves A Specialist

Would you allow a GP to work on your triple bypass? OR would you prefer a heart specialist? Even better, a doctor who does only triple bypass surgery? If you feel the difference, so does your client and to ignore this basic human instinct is to do so at your own risk.

How It Works Not Just In Business But In The Workplace Too

If you’re working in a job, the same rule applies. Be known as a genius for something. Know how several things work. But branding yourself in one skill makes you the expert. Every time the company has a fire in that section, you will be known for your fire-fighting skills.

On an ordinary basis, most employees are not known for any particular skill and wonder why they are on top of the redundancy list. Bosses don’t know what you do and why you’re special, because you haven’t been doing the ‘branding bit’. It’s better to be a specialist than the ’safe unknown.’

As Dire Straits sang in one of their songs, “Sitting on the fence is a dangerous course: You could get a bullet from the peace keeping force.”

Funny (But True) Phrases When You Forget To Obey The Rules

Jack of all trades, master of none. A bird in the hand, is worth two in the bush. And the best one of all: Keep it simple, stupid!

Keep putting these principles in action and you will see a marked improvement in your business.

If you don’t believe in Santa, you’d better change your mind, because the fat man from the north pole rocks on and you too can do the same if you stick to the basics. Find out if your product or service matches up by reading the article below.

Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle All the Way…

If you go to the heart of Santa’s marketing, the one word you come away with is ‘consistency’. Generation after generation have been exposed to one brand, one message, and the same powerful imagery. Just like Mercedes own the term ‘luxury’ and Volvo owns the term ’safety’, Santa owns the word ‘hope’. Every kid worth his Nintendo, hopes he’s got enough points on the goodness scale to justify a mountain of gifts.

Yet, most companies get tired of their own brand. They chop, change and pour thousands (if not millions) of dollars into a bottomless pit of mindless change. Take a look at McDonald’s advertising, for instance. McDonald’s own the word family outing yet their ads have been straying down the teenager path.

Does it make sense to consistently occupy one niche? You bet it does! Families go out with their kids to McDonalds. These kids sprout into budget-conscious teenagers that hang out at McDonalds. They have kids and grandkids and guess where they all end up. At the big yellow ‘M’, that’s where!

Santa doesn’t waver. His customers are kids. Like several marketers, he might have been sorely tempted to enter the gift market. With bad advice, he would have tried to get to teenagers, adults and everyone. Can you see the magic still working? Even the tiniest of niches is huge and niches have a way of expanding by themselves.

At the end of the day, it’s the consistency that takes the jingle all the way to the bank. Too many companies lose focus and give you seven reasons why you should buy from them. Santa sticks to one: Be a ‘good’ kid or you can keep hoping!

You Can Spot Him in the Middle of a Crowded Sky

Do you know anyone who comes to visit on a sleigh in the middle of the night? With reindeer and gifts? The reason why Santa stands out so vividly in our memories is because he’s different. The postman does the same thing, but leaves without the flourish.

It’s really important to work out how your marketing message differs. Santa’s core marketing term is not built solely on consistent branding but also on a very hard-nosed differentiation. Too much communication out there fits in with what’s safe. Customers have just one slot in their mind. You have to enter that slot at such an obtuse angle that they remember you for life.

Rose Richards runs Office Doctor. The term that set her apart from all the rest of the administration crowd is the term, Small business pain relief. Can you imagine your reaction when you hear something like that? The human mind is intensely curious and a marketing statement like that is pure bait. You want to know what pain relief she brings and how she goes about it-specially if you’re the one in pain. That’s only half the story. The construction of the message elevates her from simple number crunching to brain surgery and makes her unique.

If you want differentiation you need look no further than the guiding light of Santa’s sleigh– Rudolph, with his shiny nose. Can you even remember the names of the rest of the eight reindeer?

One very important point, however, is that the marketing message isn’t just different, but also customer-oriented. Rose takes the clutter out of administration and Rudolph provides a beacon for clearer navigation.

If you don’t have a benefit for the customer, just being different is going to get you nowhere.

Give and You Shall Receive

How many of you are out there networking like crazy? Trying desperately to fill in your steadily depleting bank reserves? You want, want, want! Take a look at Santa’s style.

He’s into giving first. If you probe deep into your mind, you’ll find the people you like best are those who have given you their time, their money or their knowledge. You trust them, and it’s very hard to say no when they ask you for a favour in return.

The deepest core of human emotions is fear. Every single product or service, without exception, is sold on the basis of turgid fear. The only known antidote to fear is TRUST. When trusts struts upwards, fear banishes itself to penguin land. The more you pile up the trust, the more you can do business.

Wouldn’t Santa be able to sell you just about anything? Would he be able to cross-sell and up-sell product? Santa could knock on your door next summer and you’d be more than happy to have him join your barbeque.

It’s up to you to build up the trust one Lego block at a time. Identify your clients and see what you can give them. It could be information, time or even a chocolate covered scrumptious cookie. It’s the old ‘What’s in it for me?’ theory. If you can’t find something calorie-ridden for their minds or bodies, they won’t want to see you.

Play Santa. It works.

He Knows if You’ve Been Bad or Good…

Heck Santa knows his customers. He even knows when you are sleeping, or awake.

Then, there’s you. Look at your biggest customer. What’s her name? When is her birthday? Does she like Indian curries or sushi? In curries can she handle hot or medium? What does she think about you? What doesn’t she like?

You’re guessing for sure. You can’t be dead certain because you’ve been so busy looking at dollar signs that you’ve missed the plot completely.

The reason why Santa’s marketing works is because he intimately knows your individual needs. If you want a drum kit, you get one. If you want a Barbie, you don’t end up sulking with a xylophone.

Santa knows because he’s interested in giving. To give, you have to know exactly what the receiver wants or your gift is not worth the packaging it’s wrapped in.

Some people worry about invading personal privacy. Hogwash! When was the last time you got upset because a supplier turned up with a big chocolate cake (your favourite) for your birthday? or with rare stamps for your son (because he loves collecting stamps)?

Santa’s invades our privacy gently and uses it to give, not to take. That’s why we don’t mind it. The tax department on the other hand, uses our information to take and therein lies the principal difference.

Once a Customer, Always a Customer

Santa Doesn’t Lose Customers. Period.

One of the primary reasons why he’s able to achieve this amazing feat is because he thinks of his customer’s customer. His customer is the kid, who in a few years gets a little wiser about Santa and his customer’s customer is the parent who has the amazing power to get their children to be nice not naughty, if only for a short while.

Since the concept works in their favour, they do all the advertising. Without TV, radio or the internet, Santa’s message gets a grip on millions of kids around the planet. These kids grow up and the marvel of Santa is handed down through the generations.

While It’s OK For Santa, How Would This Work In The Real World? Say, If You Sold Jeans.

Jeans West, a jean retailer, has several of the answers. I needed one pair, but Stephanie (the sales girl) sold me two–not by hassling me, but by gently reminding me I would get $20 off the second pair. Then, with my purchase, she gave me a gift voucher of $10, for my use or to pass on. They, also signed me up for a loyalty program that offered to give me a 10% discount if I purchased over $250 worth of product in the next 6 months.

This Is Effectively What Jeans West Did to Make Me a Permanent Customer.

Step 1: The sales person asked the right questions to find out my need.
Step 2: She up-sold the product giving me good value for money.
Step 3: A gift voucher with a validity date, ensured an additional purchase. Or even better, the chance for me to pass it on to another person thus ‘creating a customer’ for Jeans West.
Step 4: Tying my fickle consumer head into a loyalty scheme. They wanted me to stay with them forever.

Santa’s steps may vary, but in essence he ties you into a solid loyalty program that is near impossible to get off. It’s ‘customer get customer’, rather than ‘advertising get customer.’ It’s cheaper and it works!

In conclusion here are the main points why Santa’s customers keeps coming back. These concepts may sound old, even trite, but have been proven time after time to work well. Test them against your company and brand to see where you can learn from the man from the North Pole.

1) Solid branding:
We’re not talking lease here. Consistency is the key. This applies everywhere from networking meetings, advertising to any sort of communication that goes out. Keep hammering home the same unique message and put it up front. The weather changes all the time which is why we can’t trust it.

If you must change, it’s because your old message isn’t doing a complete job. I changed our first baseline from ‘Recession proof business principles’ to ‘Reactivating dormant business clients.’
The proposition was the same but the second line got 10 times the response.

2) Differentiation:
Santa knows he can be a courier with a difference. You, too, can create your own legend. Nike used Just Do It. Coke threw in the concept, Rum and Coke, indelibly burning the word classic into our consciousness. Sameness is in your mind. No matter how many brands exist on the market, your product has a fingerprint of its own. You just have to dig deep to find out.

3) Build trust by giving first.
Life is all about sowing, then reaping-but sowing comes first. If you don’t give first, you will only get limited results. The more you stop thinking of yourself and focus on what the customer needs instead, the more you are trusted. Business is all about trust. If you don’t have it, you’re yesterday’s soup.

4) Know your customer…
Like you know the hair on your head. Data collection and its optimum usage will get you right into their minds and keep you permanently rooted in. Every time they see you, they should think you are Santa coming to town.

5) Reactivate dormant clients
They are all volcanoes. Sitting there with the power to erupt mightily. Figure out who they are and how you can work in tandem with them. Forget your product or service. That’s a given– It has to be good. Find out the ‘everything else’ factor and you will keep them for life.

Like Santa does…