Weaving the threads of thought into something whole
The more choices you give yourself the higher the difficulty of choosing one.
Marketing usually works if there is one thing that your customer has to do.
If you give them a choice, you paralyze them.
Remember the last time you were at a breakfast cereal aisle and wanted to try out a new flavor?
Cranberry almond, choco chunk crispy, mixed berries, mixed nuts…how much time did you take to come to a decision?
Or did you just got fed up and picked up the one that you always buy?
Start with inventing a product that is for the crazies, for the dreamers and for the creatives.
Then build an ecosystem around that product so if someone uses one of your products their friends must use your products in order to work efficiently.
Then come out with a new model of a previous product.
Then remove the headphone jack and send these along with your product.
These are tedious for your customers to use as they cannot charge and listen to music at the same time.
No problem, we have a solution which is more magical than ever.
Tadann!
The answer is you leave them no choice, only an empty wallet.
Does this type of organizational behavior create promoters or desserters?
This is Burt’s Bees Lip Balm. I stole it from my wife.
I have been stealing this lip balm from her since last 3 years.
Burt, never showed me an ad.
But Burt showed up with his 1980s formula, beeswax based lip balm.
The first time I saw the lip balm, was at the checkout counter at a CVS in Boston.
Bought 2 of them because I liked the packaging. Who knew, that the actual lip balm was as cool as the packaging itself.
Then I moved back to India and became a lip balm thief.
Why?
Because Burt solves my problem.
Every day, for the last 4 years now.
Never once I saw an ad by Burt.
Oh also, even when I used to live in the U.S. – no ads.
But of course Burt also made sure that when I put the lip balm on, the peppermint cools up my face like crazy!
In India, these lip balms are sold on Amazon for 4 times the price of any other lip balm in the country.
So, when we run out of these, do I wait for “My Uncle” to go to the U.S.(like a good Indian guy that I am) and buy a bucket load for me, or do I pay 4 times the price for this and get them in 2 days?
You tell me.
Let’s say you run a pizza place in New York.
It is a tough market, yet rewarding if you have customers.
Owning your own pizza place business is a great idea, you get to have as much pizza as you want, when you want.
AWESOME!
Now, there is this guy down the block, who also has a pizza place.
Your marketing guy says he will help you do better than the guy down the block.
He helps you sell your 11 inch pizza with a simple slogan “Our 11 inch pizza has 8 slices while the shop down the block has only 6 slices in their 11 inch pizza, for the same price, you get 2 extra slices”
People see this campaign, and they want to try that special 11 inch pizza that has 8 slices instead of 6.
But soon they realize that your marketing guy is a fraud, your pizza tastes the same as the guy down the block.
The amount and taste of pizza they eat from your place is same as any other 11 inch pizza.
Soon it turns out, customers are angry, they’re going to tell their friends about this.
That pizza place, Shivam’s pizza just cheated and hustled me to buy their pizza. I ate the same quantity, and his quality and taste were practically the same as any other. Shivam is an ass of a pizza place owner.
Almost all the customers to their friends
And now you have to close your shop, and no free pizza for you whenever you want.
If you want to continue eating free pizza you might want to fire that marketing guy and use the money and effort on the things that count to your EXISTING customers.
Focus on making the pizza better, focus on the softness of the dough, the way the crust is fluffy yet crispy on the outside, focus on the quality of cheese, the tangy yet sweet taste of the sauce, the freshness of the toppings, and people will prefer your 11 inch pizza over any other pizza place even if yours had just 1 slice.
And slowly but surely people won’t need you to tell them that you have great pizza.
People who already ate your pizza will do that for you because they simply love your pizza.
And you get to have free pizza for the rest of your life.
No hustling for sales, better pizza and your free lunch for life is sorted!
There are two kinds of people.
People who like yellow colored lights and people who like white colored or day lights.
There can be 3 types of businesses.
1. A company that sells yellow bulbs
2. A company that sells white bulbs
3. A company that sells yellow and white bulbs
Now, if your customer likes yellow light and you have yellow bulbs and they know you have yellow bulbs, congratulations you have a customer.
If they do not know that you have yellow bulbs, all you need to do is tell them we make yellow bulbs and if they need a yellow bulb, you are willing to sell it to them.
If you have a white bulb, and you try convincing that person that white light is better than yellow light, you soon have no customers.
If you have both bulbs, and people do not trust you or maybe they do not know you exist or maybe a white light lover thinks you make only yellow bulbs you have no customers.
Having both bulbs is actually another problem to be solved, additional cost to be born, higher number of people to be educated.
Having one type of bulb and making sure that people who love that color of light love you as well and trust you is how we win the marketing game.
Trust, dependability and of course having the right product.
Atlas of Thought 