The Marketing Myth That Is Killing Your Business
by Ryan McMullen
Recently, I read an open letter from Everett Piper, the President of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, to his students telling them that they are “Self-absorbed and narcissistic” and “This is not a day care”, “This is a University.” Among other things, the point of the letter was to say that this generation of millennials thinks only of themselves.
This letter came on the heels of that whole dust-up at Mizzou (I’ll save my personal views on millennials for another venue), but as current events often do, it got me thinking how all of this pertains to marketing.
My wife and I were in the kitchen talking about it and I turned to her and said, “You know what? 99% of the marketing I see businesses doing is completely self-absorbent and narcissistic.” On occasion, I say outlandish things, so she wasn’t that surprised, but I certainly piqued her interest. The reason being is that almost every business’s message is how great they are.
The Myth: Talk about how wonderful, brilliant and cutting-edge your approach is.
Every business you see markets that they have the best services, the best products, the most industry accolades, enough certifications to choke a horse, the biggest inventory, have been in business for a million years, and the list goes on and on.
The Truth: Nobody cares!
Your customers and clients have a problem and they need you to fix it, period. If you were lying in the street with a broken leg, do you care about all of the amenities the ambulance has? No. Your problem is needing to get to the hospital quickly and you don’t really care how you get there.
Stop telling people about how brilliant your approach is. Once they become a customer you’re going to show them what you do, but as far as your marketing goes, there is no place for it.
The Customer-First Approach
The shift you need to make is to start talking to your clients from their point of view. Instead of your offer being the shiniest new object, your offer needs to be a statement of the outcome you deliver and why your audience needs it so badly. What is it costing them to not solve their problem? How great is it going to be when they do solve it?
If you can describe your audience’s problem better than they can, you CANNOT lose. Let’s say you’re walking back to your car after a Cardinals game describing to your friend how you have a shooting pain that starts in your foot, runs up to your knee, then back down again. If the dirtiest, shadiest person you’ve ever laid eyes on came around the corner and described those exact same symptoms back to you and told you how he fixed it, you would absolutely listen to him and take his advice.
Your audience believes that if you can describe the problem and understand their situation, you must have the solution.
Your job is take your customers from the Hell they are in to the Heaven of no longer having the problem and they don’t care about the path you take to get there. Just remember, customers and clients aren’t buying their way INTO something, they are buying their way OUT of something.
Ryan McMullen (ryan@stlouismarketinglab.com) is the owner of St. Louis Marketing Lab.