What is the difference between an Elevator Pitch and a Value Proposition, and when to use them?

What is the difference between an Elevator Pitch and a Value Proposition, and when to use them?

Mar 4, 2019 | Communication, Management

Good question, but the challenge seems to be overwhelming for some of those who most need to be clear on the differences, and when and how to use them.

I spent most of Thursday and Friday last week at the ‘Emergence‘ conference in Sydney, an event designed to boost the start-up scene in Sydney by bringing together investors, start-ups and industry experts. A similar event was held in Brisbane on Monday and Tuesday.

A terrific couple of days, with one significant blemish.

Most of the founders who had the opportunity to present to an audience of several hundred investors, and service providers of many types, blew it! Completely blew it.

Has nobody told these talented engineers and designers that you only get one chance to make a first impression?

The elevator pitch.

This is a very simple, compelling to your ideal customer, one sentence distillation of why  they should buy from you, or more often, just keep talking to you. It is not easy to craft, largely because in one sentence, you have to leave out a lot. Every stakeholder should be able to recite this in their sleep, and should do so at every opportunity when meeting people.  The purpose is to pique interest, and to extract the follow up questions, that can be answered by the delivery of the value proposition, which may lead to a further and deeper conversation.

I did not hear one compelling elevator pitch in the two days. Not one!

Use the elevator pitch when you have 30 seconds, any extra time you may be given is just a huge bonus not to be wasted.

The Value Proposition.

Your Value proposition is a more detailed articulation of why someone would engage in business with you. Still concise, focused, but designed to get to the core of who the product is designed to help,  how that will happen, and what results can be expected. You know the delivery has been successful when there are follow up questions that enable you to go into a bit more detail about the problem you are solving, and the beneficial outcomes of use.

Again, last week, there was an almost complete absence of a Value Proposition. In its place, we were given lists of names of notable people who were involved, how many degrees they had, what the technology entailed,  and some detailed project plans and milestones. In most cases, little that would encourage further engagement, although for a few, there was considerable value hidden amongst the verbiage, poor delivery, and technical jargon.

Use it when you have 15 minutes, along with a pitch deck that leaves the listener with no option but to be engaged. The best outcome to be achieved from such a line-up of consecutive pitches is that the audience remembers nothing but yours, and the individuals feel compelled to follow up!

If I was the organiser, it would be mandatory for those pitching to spend a bit of time with someone who could help them assemble their deck, and then get their message across. Either that, or hide the ego, and get someone with presentation expertise to do the preparation and delivery.

For all of that, the exercise was a great success, and warrants support from those with an interest in nurturing a successful start-up ecosystem, and that should be everybody.

Finding victory over the deceptive demons of the marketing mind

Finding victory over the deceptive demons of the marketing mind

Feb 13, 2019 | Communication, Customers

 

Years ago I heard the great social researcher and author Hugh McKay describe every persons view of the world as the sight they see from behind the bars of their own experience, background, training and ideas.

The more developed are all these barriers, the more and thicker the bars between you and the outside world.

For marketers setting out to engage those who are most unlikely to be like them, this creates a dilemma.

How do you remove the bars, and see the world as your prospective customer would?

The demons in your mind will try and convince you that the world is as you see it, and at the very least, they will allow only a modest number of modifications without a significant level of discomfort to you.

Human beings connect easily to those who are most like  them. This is a unifying factor of evolutionary biology. It ensures that as we evolved, the small communities in which we evolved could be secure, or at least as secure as possible from the beasties lurking in the undergrowth.

While we may understand at a logical level the nature of those we are setting out to influence, at a primal level, we struggle to align our thoughts and words to theirs, we remain wedded to our own instinctive patterns and prejudices.

We all value truth, love, and life, but the means of expressing those values will be different. In understanding and relating to the differences, despite our own deeply held views, lies the marketing gold of true empathy. It all comes down to the language you use. Not just the verbal one, which is  the default, but the whole range of non-verbal channels, which according to many studies contributes more than 50% to the interpretation the receiver makes of the message.

Trying to sell renewable energy technology to someone who believes fossil fuel is the only answer to the consistent delivery of baseload power is challenging, as is trying to convince a conservative Christian that same sex marriage is OK.  

Overpowering that lurking demon that demands you see the world of your customer in a particular way is fundamental to being successful.

 

Photo credit: Sculptures lurking the shadows collection

 

 

 

The hidden magic of the triggering event

The hidden magic of the triggering event

Jan 31, 2019 | Communication, Marketing, Sales, Strategy

What is it that acts as the catalyst that initiates the journey a customer will undertake that may end up with a transaction?

If you knew this, you would be in a situation to be very specific about your marketing, both the nature of the offer, the way you make it, and to whom you communicate it.

Customer personas are a great way to focus resources in a manner that delivers productivity of your marketing efforts. The more details and representative the persona the  better.

It works, and works well, but is not the whole story.

There are events and interactions that occur in peoples lives that are not logically accommodated within a persona. There is a point in the journey a customer makes towards that purchase not considered with anywhere near enough weight.

That is the situation, the event, the ‘thing’ that acts as a catalyst to create the beginning of the customer journey. The event that suddenly creates an awareness that there might be value in considering options, and that the current solution, whatever that may be is inadequate.

This is a ‘triggering’ event. 

A friend is a real estate agent.

She knows the market cycles very well, not just the economic ones, the seasonal ones that tell you that there will be a lull in activity in the market over Christmas, which will pick up again when things get back to normal in February.

Seasonal.

However, over Christmas lots of people will find themselves with family and friends staying over, for the night, for a week, and suddenly, the house they have is too small, the kids no longer can sleep two to a bed,  and one bathroom is no longer enough. That becomes a triggering event for some to start the process of thinking that perhaps a bigger house is necessary, or that they really need to do a tree change. As a result they start being unconsciously sensitive to any real estate ads that may pop up, where before they would not have even seen them.

Is my friend better off starting her advertising in February, when all the other agents are starting, in the expectation that the market is waking up? Or should she advertise in January, when there is  no activity, nobody else is advertising, but the possible users of her service are in the middle of their ‘triggering event’ and highly sensitive to suddenly relevant messages?

I know where my money would be.

 

 

 

The cost of a fact free media

The cost of a fact free media

Jan 29, 2019 | Communication, Governance

EEEERRRRHHHHH

Excuse me, I just threw up on myself after being assaulted by another ad by a fat billionaire exhorting me to ‘Make Australia Great Again’ by voting for him and his dodgy party.

That nasty experience got me wondering about the nature of advertising in the digital world.

While we have people in Canberra who still think that regulating for diversity in media ownership is a thing on which they should  be spending time, Google, Facebook , and Alibaba (the latter almost exclusively in China) have sucked up 62% of the worlds digital ad spend of US 327 billion, last year.  Bringing up the rear is a rapidly improving Amazon, aggressively chasing a bigger share of this largess. These huge numbers leave what is left of the rest of the media, particularly the ‘old media’,  scrabbling to pay the rent.

The owners of the ‘Old’ media which interrupted me with the ad that started this thought are no doubt pleased to have the fat billionaire as a paying customer. Their priority is to  get the dollars in any way they can, to pay the rent, not make judgements on the veracity of the claims made by their advertisers. Facebook also faces this problem of fact neutrality, magnified geometrically by the reach and ‘stickiness’ of the platform, combined with its capacity to target and deliver messages to a very specific audience . 

However, our society has been built, at least to some extent, on the foundation of a free and diverse press that has the funds and bottle to be the ‘policemen’ of the standards and performance of those in power, political and corporate.

These media businesses have largely disappeared in the last decade, overwhelmed by the shift of advertising dollars, the foundations of their business, to digital outlets.

This has left the place without any police.

Look no further than the 2 recent Royal Commissions for any evidence you may need. If it was not for Kate McClymont, and a very few other investigative journalists with a passion for the truth, and the now defunct Sydney Morning Herald, these two rocks would not have been kicked over. The roaches hiding underneath would still be free to engage in their brand of hyper-hypocrisy, with most of us unaware of their corrosive and immoral activities.

Advertising funded investigative journalism via a neutral and responsible press is almost dead in this country. Without it we are deprived of the major driver of publicly minded behaviour.  We want, and need corporations to be publicly minded, to act in the best interests of  the community they serve. However nice those words may be, the officers of corporations are charged with the responsibility to deliver shareholder returns, and generally they do so without reference to the long term public good. The corollary is that personal agendas, and greed,  also get a very solid run.

We have conferences and forums where these corporate officers and politicians tell us what they are doing for us. However, the reality is they are mostly reading from a PR script, while attending a firefighting conference that only invites arsonists.

Advertising is increasingly becoming a tax on the poor, those who cannot afford to pay to be ad free. All this does is add weight to the confirmation bias we all have by removing any contrary voice that we may have seen and heard in the past.

That emasculation of media, the demise of a broad based, investigative and community minded press has consequences for the amount, type and quality of public debate, none of which I like.

Cartoon credit: Hugh McLeod at gapingvoid.com

Anatomy of a sales effective website

Anatomy of a sales effective website

Dec 7, 2018 | Communication, Marketing, Sales, Social Media

People search Google for 1 of 2 reasons:

  • They have a problem to solve, they need information, guidance, options, and are looking for help in some form.
  • They are bored and too lazy to go and have a game of golf, tennis, or mow the lawns, so they look for cat photos to amuse themselves.

It follows therefore that if you are setting out to be of interest to those in the first group, it helps if they recognise quickly that you have something of what they are seeking. Any Google search will throw up multiple options for the searcher to have a quick look at.

Most times when an SME recognises the need for a website, they hire a web designer, and stand back and let them run.

Wrong strategy.

The technology of websites these days is largely commoditised, the 18 year old down the road can often do the ‘techie’ end of a site construction quicker and better than many of the ‘professionals’ around.

The challenge is the  marketing and graphic design of the site.  This is all about the combination of the words being not only the right words for the visitor, but in the right place so they get seen, and the graphic design that makes the site visually interesting and engaging, and importantly, makes some  sort of offer that leads towards the transaction.

The following has nothing to do with SEO, it assumes that you have been found, by one means or another, and your task is now to engage the casual visitor, and very particularly, that casual visitor who fits the profile of your ideal customer, in some sort of process that may lead to  a (first) transaction. The reality is that if you are not attracting your ideal customer, the whole exercise will be at best, sub-optimal. The objective should be to get these people to step through the site to a positive conclusion.

The natural progression of eyes across a website is outlined below, as they seek the answer to the question in their minds ‘Will I find what I am looking for here?’

 

The basic principal.

Top left, to right, across towards middle left, then back to bottom right.

All of this is ‘above the fold’. Many of the more recent sites have a ‘rolling’ architecture, but that does not  eliminate the old adage of ‘be above the fold’.

Let’s go into a little more detail.

The header.

The all important header, or headline, has to be specific, and deliver the value proposition that is directed towards the ideal customer, the answer to their question. Evolutionary biology plays a key role in the construction of the header. Our built in survival mechanisms register automatically the elements around us, is it dangerous, is it food, shelter, a potential partner, without us recognising at a conscious level these automatic choices. If your ideal customer registers in their ‘lizard’ brain that you are good for them, a significant part of your work is done.

The cost of failure.

Highlighting the pain points most likely to be felt by your ideal customer provides a barrier to them just moving on. The more you can highlight the problem they feel, the greater the chance that they will ‘stick’ on your site instead of moving on.

The Solution.

In the simplest words possible, how does your product/service solve the problem.

The plan.

Having established the ideal outcome, offer a plan, create the steps to achieve it. Making it easy to progress to the transaction and beyond by making the process transparent and easy is the equivalent of a ‘Close’.

Testimonials.

‘Social proof’ to use the psychological jargon is an extremely powerful tool. People, prepared to be identified and tell a listener how great  your product or service is, how it delivered for them, are better than almost anything else in closing a sale. Even if the video is a bit amateurish, that is OK.  get those testimonials.

Call to Action.

Make sure that you ask for the order, or the progression through the funnel to the next stage. Often asking several times lifts the closure rates significantly.

 

There is  no need for clever graphics or fancy advertising slogans. Your ideal customer is looking to see if you can help them, or if they should speak to one of your competitors. The task of your website is therefore clear, by presenting a credible way of solving their problem.

No fancy embellishments, industry jargon to establish your creds, unintelligible sentences, words of 5 syllables, just simple, clear, uncluttered communication.

Help them to help themselves!

Header: is a common  ‘wire-frame’ 

 

Anatomy of a successful sales letter.

Anatomy of a successful sales letter.

Nov 28, 2018 | Communication

My inbox is stuffed with sales letters, an outcome of 20 years of researching and engaging in a wide range of areas of interest to me, and those I work with, in an effort to distil the lessons to be passed on.

Some are very good, they move the hand towards the credit card, almost involuntarily, and some are just plain awful. Most are somewhere in the middle, OK, but generally no cigar.

A sales letter has only two  functions: to state why somebody should give you their business, and then to lead them to the next stage in the process, which is not always a transaction. Most often with a letter, it is simply to move you to the next point in the sales ‘funnel’

It should always be in the language of the receiver, and as personalised as possible, without  any spelling, grammatical, or any other type of error.

In other words, accuracy and clarity.

The flow of a sales letter is critical to success, and is a fairly well understood series of steps:

Headline.

The headline is the most important part of a sales letter. It is what someone sees first, and unless it engages in some way, they will move on. David Ogilvy, the original Madman stated that the headline was 80% of any ad, and a sales letter  is nothing but a form of advertising, a cheaper form of a sales person.

After the headline, which distils the reason why a reader should continue to read, there is a logical process which normally looks like the following:

Pain points.

Describe the problem in words that the potential customer will relate to and understand, personalising the pain, and demonstrating that you understand it. Do this well  and they will start to empathise.

Amplification and Aspiration.

Amplify the consequences of not solving the problem,  and offer a vision of what the feeling will be like when it has been solved.

Story.

Sales letters are really a story, and you have to tell the story of your solution, and how their problem can be solved, the means by which your solution will deliver them the outcomes to which they now aspire. People are not buying your product, they are buying the  outcome from buying your product. It is the old ‘drill and hole’ story. When you go to the hardware to buy a drill, it is not the drill you want, but the hole it will deliver you. Testimonials are powerful ways to demonstrate the outcome from purchase.

Offer.

A sales letter has to make an offer, it has to offer a conclusion to the story told, the problem solved. You have to be absolutely clear about what it is you want them to do, how and by when. Many sales letters I see shy away from being direct, but if you have not lost them at the beginning,  and they are still reading, there is a fair chance they are interested, so enable the interest by telling them what to do next.

You do not have to be a professional copywriter to produce a good sales letter, but you have to be very clear, concise, and empathetic. Not an easy task, but one which generally comes at the end of a process of understanding the value of your offer to a specific group of potential customers, or better still, a specific person.