Marketing Revolves Around Human Psychology
Youve heard it before: the vast majority of businesses fail within a few years.
Now lets think about this for second.
Why do smart, hard-working people with good intentions crash and burn? Its often a combination of factors, from co-founder conflict, to funding issues and execution struggles
But at the core of it, businesses fail for one fundamental reason: they cant sell their stuff.
Thats the bottom line.
And one of the root causes is that most entrepreneurs dont truly understand marketing. You might be super passionate about your product or service, have a tremendous work ethic, and a wonderfully designed websiteIf youre not highly skilled at marketing and selling, chances are youre going to fail. Sorry to break it to you.
Now if youre thinking, oh I took a few marketing classes in College, Im good. Think again.
I personally have a marketing degree and an MBA from 2 reputable universities, and when I started my first business I was in for a rude awakening.
I quickly realized that marketing in the entrepreneurial world is a whole different game than what I learned in the classroom. Business schools tend to focus on Fortune-500 type marketing, they dont allow us to interact with real customers, and theyre years behind when it comes to online marketing. If youre committed to building a world-class business, you have to be willing to saddle up and learn real-world marketing. Take online courses, read books, get out here, experiment relentlessly, and get excellent mentors to help you build your marketing skill set.
If youre willing to do that, skys the limit. Youll develop skills you can use to be successful in any business endeavor for the rest of your career.
Today, I want to share with you the 3 most common marketing mistakes youre likely to be making right now, and how you can effectively solve them for good.
Mistake #1: Trying to Serve Everyone
The blessing and the curse of many entrepreneurs is that theyre good-hearted, and really want to make world a better place.
The blessing part is easy to figure out but the curse? By trying to help everyone with their product or service They often end up helping no one.
Having too broad of a target market is probably the single most common marketing mistake people make. In order to stand out in the crowd, you need to be really specific with which sub-segment of the population youre targeting. The narrower your niche, the better.
Now youre probably thinking Ahh, but what about all these other prospective customers Ill be giving up on? I get that.
You have to think about it the other way: get excited about how well youre going to be able to serve the specific customers youre going after. By focusing on a specific group, youll be able to serve them much better and have a more profound impact on their life.
Lets go concrete with this. When youre describing your ideal customer, you should be able to get highly descriptive of that person, both on a demographic and psychographic level.
For example, Men between the age of 25 and 40 is a lousy target market. Instead, it should be something like Professional men between 25 and 40 who live in major cities, are passionate about the outdoors, who struggle to find time for their hobbies, and are afraid that their best years are passing them by. Now were talking. This is a target you can really help and make a lot of money in the process.
Solution: Write down the main characteristics of your ideal customer. Describe their frustrations, fears, and aspirations. Get as deep and as personal as you can. You want to able to put yourself in their skin and feel what they feel, think what they think.
Mistake #2: Building Without Customer Validation
Many entrepreneurs have a weird fantasy. They envision themselves spending a few months in a basement/garage/cave, building something extraordinary, emerging from their confinement, announcing their creation to the world, and becoming a massive success.
Sounds cool pretty cool indeed Only problem is that its NOT how the real world works.
Its very hard to accurately predict what your customers want. Conversely, its very easy to get carried away with an idea, without seeking validation along the way
and then fall face first when you realize that no one actually wants it.
In business and marketing, you should take on a scientist mindset: always experiment and test your assumptions, and have as much contact with your test subjects (customers) as possible.
Now in order to do this, its important to keep your ego in check. You dont always love the feedback youre getting, but thats ok. Its only data. Dont let your emotions get the best of you.
Heres why: If your idea isnt good, youre much better off finding out about it now, instead of 6 months down the road, when youve already sunk thousands of dollars into the project
Test, test, test. Thats what all successful marketers do. Because it works.
Solution: Before you even build anything, you should spend time interviewing potential customers to discover what they want (and learn their frustration, fears and aspirations). Then, build a prototype and test it to get customer feedback as fast as possible. From there, go back in the lab, incorporate the feedback, and test again. Repeat this cycle until you have something that customers really love, and for which theyre willing to pay money.
Mistake #3: Shouting from the Rooftop
Now that youve clearly established your ideal customer and that youre building exactly what they want, the next step is to communicate with them effectively.
The key to that is to speak to each customer as though youre talking directly to that person. One-on-one. Not one-to-many. This distinction is so critical, and so often overlooked.
When youre writing directly to one person, you can speak to their frustrations, fears and aspirations. You can make them feel understood. Which in many ways is the magic sauce of marketing.
Eben Pagan, one of the best marketers of our time once said the moment you make your customer feel understood, magic happens.
When they feel like you get their problem, they will automatically assume that you have the solution. Once that happens, selling becomes easy. And fun.
Solution: Every time you create marketing material, write directly to your ideal customer. Put yourself in their shoes, and ask yourself Does this really speak to me? Do I feel understood? Does this inspire me? If the answer is not a resounding YES!, go back to the drawing board.
Conclusion
Since marketing revolves around human psychology, and the human psyche is a complex system, many nuances and subtleties that go into becoming a world-class marketer.
But to become excellent and shine in your niche is not as hard as you think. Simply by focusing on the solutions to the 3 common mistakes Ive outlined above, youre likely to outperform your competition within a few months.
To recap, heres the magic recipe:
1) Get crystal clear on who your ideal customer is.
2) Regularly interact with live customers and build exactly what they want.
3) Communicate with them in a one-on-one way, and make them feel understood.
Et voila!
Apply these 3 principles and youll be well on your way to beating the odds, building a very successful business, and actually making the world a better place.
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