Manhattan Marketing Maven

The FTC's Firestorm over Blogging

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) revisited its Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising , the rules on truth in advertising, for the first time since 1980  and applied it to bloggers. A firestorm of criticism erupted. 

But I don’t get it on several levels. 

For years people pretending to be consumers have been posting blog comments, reviews, criticisms, endorsements, features, benefits, images, schematics  and other content pretending to independent advocates of  brands and causes. Whole firms of these fakeroo posters peddle this service to brands desperate from buzz and new customers. A few years ago Wal*Mart’s PR agency Edelman got busted for this kind of abuse. 

Bloggers, me included, are always looking for freebies and swag. I’m still jealous that when Jeff Jarvis said he was in “Dell hell” he got a laptop. When I posted my “Dell hell” story I got a snotty call from a Dell flack. 

Over the years, I got a few books to review, a few t-shirts and a mountain of white papers and reports that the authors’ often charge for. I haven’t shilled for anybody and I’ve tried to be equally critical of everyone; sometimes ranting and sometimes praising. My goal is to disclose everything, take nothing and hold on dearly to my digital bully pulpit. 

It’s only sensible that bloggers should be transparent and ethical in revealing who is schmearing whom. Payola poisoned broadcasting and print media and has probably played an unfair role in the growth of blogging and other forms of social media. 

The FTC mandates that disclosure must be “clear and conspicuous” whatever that means.Commercial and endorsement relationships must be disclosed. Wild ass claims are out of bounds as is masquerading as someone or something you are not. The rules kick in on December 1^st and penalties include $11,000 in fines per violation. 

This seems right to me. Bloggers, like journalists, should strive for integrity and transparency by disclosing their allegiances, alignments and paid endorsements. Bloggers also should be subject to libel and slander laws and should adhere to the same code of conduct as journalists and corporate officers. 

So why did the editors of Ad Age work themselves into a lather calling  the FTC blog rules “excessive, ridiculous, hypocritical and likely unconstitutional?’? 

Because the rules are vague, difficult to understand or enforce, policed by bureaucrats subject to political influences and Obama’s direction and they come down harder on new media than old media. Who knew that Ad Age was such a digital defender?

They’re not. They are just anti-regulation across the board for advertising.

Today the New York Times weighed-in arguing that the regulations are not onerous and will probably protect the public. I agree. 

In this case, the shot across the bow is warranted. In cyberspace all kinds’ of shenanigans have gone on for more than 10 years. It is time to rattle the regulatory saber and close down the crooks, charlatans and cheaters. Even if it takes some ham-fisted FTC action, we can find the equilibrium, as needed, through the courts. 

Brain Science Validates Advertising Assumptions

 It’s always heart-warming when science validates the assumptions that underlie our thinking about messaging and media.

 

For years advertising agencies have been advising clients that disruptive or unexpected imagery seen, scanned or read with some frequency builds brand impressions. And that these impressions turn into awareness, preference, and purchases over time. Freud inferred that the unconscious mind picked up and processed as many signals as the conscious mind and on this basis the advertising industry developed rules of thumb about how, when and how often to intercept consumers and present brand messages.

 

Now brain researchers at

Tel

Aviv

University

have conducted experiments to prove this point. Professors Moti Salti, Dominique Lamy and Yair Ben-Haim documented that unconscious perception exists. A far cry from Freud’s postulates about repressed trauma and childhood angst, the data suggests that our brains take in signals and process messages on several simultaneous levels of consciousness. Perhaps this explains why even those who skip the commercials and flip past the ads can recall brand logos and key copy points. According to Professor Salti, “You walk around and are exposed to many stimuli from all directions but are aware of very few.”

 

The tests exposed participants to a square on their computer screen. By hooking these subjects to an electroencephalograph, they charted brain activity to document how and when they were conscious of seeing the square. In 50 percent of the cases they could pinpoint the exact location of the square, even if when questioned about seeing a square, they could recall nothing. The complete scientific results are being published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

 

The implications for marketers seem to be …

 

1. Don’t focus as much on engagement as on exposure. Carpet bombing might work better than we thought especially if the brain is your ally in reaching individuals who aren’t formally paying attention.
2. Frequency works. The more unconscious exposures, the more likely that the target customer will “absorb” your message regardless of his or her intention or viewing and reading habits.
3. Create scan-able messages. Don’t assume ads will be read or watched. Approach traditional advertising creative like online creative; assume things will get a quick glance at best. Then purposefully create a stimulus that is distinct and different from what is expected and what is popular and you gain a nanosecond or two of extra attention, enough to score that unconscious comprehension.
4. Messages Don’t Need to be Linear. It’s possible that those ads you see and scratch your head about, thinking “what were they thinking” may be scoring more points that we thought.
5. Subliminal advertising might exist and work.

Can Online Display Ads Work Harder?

Online display ads are the red-headed freckled kid of interactive advertising; present but not quite understood even though last year 4.5 trillion ads were served and each of us was exposed to nearly a hundred ads per person each business day. 

Marketers spent an estimated $5.9 billion in 2008 to spray and pray banners, skyscrapers, advergames, “ghost” ads and moving or animated images (the top five ad formats) across the Internet. Some hoped to provoke clicks and convert those clicks into sales. Yet many just hoped to expose passing web surfers to a brand image or brand impression in the hope of raising or extending awareness or priming the pump for later consideration or sales. 

And while the metrics of direct response advertising is generally known there is still no real consensus around and the value and utility of display advertising other than the logical belief that what worked for a century in traditional media ought to work in digital media. And while we buy the logic, many of us still have the “banners suck” mantra at the forefront of our consciousness.

But rationally it makes sense. Images, sound, moving pictures and uber creativity ought to capture the attention and motivate consumers at least as well as short text ads served up by search engines. But the difference for leading display ad sellers like Yahoo, Facebook, Fox Interactive, Microsoft, AOL and Google is in the perception of value and the ability of marketers to target and measure campaigns. And while 9.5 percent of campaigns were “behaviorally” targeted using a variety of methods and measurements, most marketers don’t have faith that they can effectively and efficiently reach target audiences using online display advertising even in this environment where there is a glut of inventory at significantly discounted prices and a gaggle of ad networks peddling remnant inventory for as low as 40 cents per thousand. 

The Online Publishers Association and ComScore, both seriously interested parties, did a study of 80 campaigns for 50 top brands which was tracked across the top 200 highly trafficked sites and concluded: 

1. The 80-20 rule applies to clicks. Eighty percent of the clicks come from 20 percent of the people exposed to the ads. At very best only 1 in 5 ads draws a click whether that was the intention of the ad or not. 

2. Displays Ads Prompt Search. Queries for terms exposed in display ads were searched 50% more often a week after exposure and 38% more often even 4 weeks after exposure. If you see something that intersects your interests or your personal wish list, you are more likely to search for it directly when you’re ready to buy. Direct and brand advertising interact synergistically online and offline. 

3. Display Ads Drive Site Engagement. Those exposed to ads spent 34 minutes per unique visitor on the sites exposed. This is hard to believe in terms of the time spent on site and the amount of “lift”. Maybe it just measures the vagaries of site architecture and navigation. 

4. Brand Exposure Bumps Up eCommerce. Those exposed to brand ads spent 7% more on average when they bought. This feels like advertising orthodoxy; exposure drives awareness, consideration and purchase and maybe added exposure convinces customers to trade up a little.

But whether you buy this data or not, the issue of buying, targeting and measuring still looms large for anyone seriously contemplating an online display campaign. Into this fray comes Shaukat Shamin, a Yahoo veteran with $6 million in venture money from Rembrandt Ventures, Onset Ventures, Reid Hoffman and SoftTech VC, and a brand spanking new display ad platform solution called Permuto. 

Permuto purports to create tools for display advertisers similar to the Google Adwords toolbox which will enable targeting, price negotiating, clearance verification, reporting and more effective sales conversion from display ads. Shaukat has organized a network of about 100 eCommerce, comparison-shopping sites and bargain hunter sites that cookie prospective buyers based on the category, product and SKUs they look at online. 

They observe, infer and assign an “ActiveShopper Score” to these individuals and then offer marketers the opportunity to follow and serve them display ads for the products they spent time with on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis. He claims this is different and better than existing "remarketing" solutions but I can't see how. You buy this service on a per-SKU basis and, so far, there are no packaged deals to be had for multiple product sets or categories and there is no product or category exclusivity available. 

At this point v1 doesn’t offer sophisticated targeting options against an estimated reach of 70 million prospective customers, but “more is planned for the future.” Overtime the marketers adopting this tool will develop best practices and/or common understandings about how to leverage the built-in functionality to optimize behavioral targeting and cost efficient conversions. 

Permuto doesn’t help if the goal of a display campaign is brand exposure or awareness in which case we’re still stuck trying to figure out how to buy, place, negotiate and prove that display ads work.

Are Advertisers Out of Touch?

Know your customer is advertising's prime directive. Yet in the evolving digital age knowing your customer is harder and harder to do even tough we have many more ways to monitor, watch, listen, react, interact and measure customer behavior.

The newest evidence of the gap between customer and advertiser perceptions comes from a survey of 1015 advertisers and 4546 customers conduced in June by Harris Interactive using the LinkedIn Research Network to qualify and access both panels. The study found that while advertisers are increasing their use of digital advertising at the expense of print and broadcast media, they are not necessarily increasing their insight into or understanding of customers by using interactive channels.

Consider these top line survey results.

Only one in twelve customers (8 percent) find advertising "very interesting."

45 percent of advertisers think Twitter is evolving and has legs as a potential media channel even though 69 percent of customers don't know enough about it or have no opinion. While ad guys are waxing poetic abut Twitter and urging clients to embrace its charms, 9 out of 10 customers don't think it will go mainstream, think its already over or don't know enough about it to have an opinion.

Advertisers peg the effectiveness of nearly all the major characteristics of ads much higher than consumers do. For example there are 20 points of difference in perceptions of ads that make you stop and think, ads that give new information or ads integrated into the feel of the program. The closest perceptions, still separated by a point or two, is the common appreciate for ads that are funny or don't take themselves too seriously.

Consumers hate intrusive ads and universally scorn pop-ups, pages that expand, ads you cannot close or escape, animations with unmutable sound and ads triggered by mouse-overs. And yet 1 in 3 say advertising influenced their last large purchase decision.

Advertisers have missed the impact of the recession on consumers. Advertisers are pushing empathy messages and framing messages that say "we'll all get through this together." While consumers want deals and want ways to have their luxuries for less.

So what does it all mean?

1. We need more ethnographic research. Advertisers are guessing. We are not really in the heads or hearts of customers and we know way too little about online behaviors and sensibilities. At the risk of shilling for Harris Interactive, we all need to invest more in understand mindsets, click streams and evolving online behavior. After 10-12 years of an active commercial Internet, we are not really keeping pace with the inventive and not-so-intuitive ways our customers are using the Internet. 

2. Actions Matter More than Words. We have underestimated the impact of the recession. Our customers don't want rhetoric they want help. I suspect fundamental behaviors will be changed as a result of hard times. Advertisers need to focus on this and position themselves as a source of help. Spend your marketing budget strategically on meeting this need not on more lofty messaging.

3. Funny and Expected Trumps Newsy and Intrusive. Customers expect ads. They like the funny and offbeat ads. They know that there is hardly anything that's truly new and exciting. They want them where and how they are used to them. Nobody wants to be captured, buffaloed or cornered by an ad. The more intrusive it is, the more backlash you provoke.

4. We are Not Using the Data We Have. The interactive ad universe gives us the ability to collect and analyze mountains of data., This survey suggests that we are not connecting the dots and using observed and documented behavior to inform strategy or messaging. This might be a result of siloed organizational structures or siloed thinking. But we know and collect much more than we use in crafting approaches and campaigns. And to the extent that we don't mind the data, we miss the boat. We have a way to go before we can make any serious claims about customer intimacy. And before we realize this goal, we have to more effectively use what we already know to achieve great impact and customer engagement.

Listening to the Voice of the Customer

The driving dynamic tension that animates advertising is the need to address customers on their own terms. The critical variable that separates a great campaign from a hopeless flop is how marketers craft the delicate blend between what customers want to hear and what marketers want to tell them. 

You could argue that all communications is a tug of war between listening and talking and between what you want to say and what they want to hear. 

Every client seeks to hear the voice of the customer. Many firms have ongoing crusades to discern, distill and distinguish the distinct voice of their customer. Many others wave the VOC flag vigorously to filter creative messaging and/or to justify all manner of creative, media and promotional choices.

The elusive voice of the customer is often sought after in surveys, focus groups, promotions and direct encounters not to mention in purchase and POS data. And yet more often than not when creative and editorial choices are made the hunches, the sensibilities and the voices of the client trump the voice of the customer. Anyone who's ever worked in an agency has experienced this.

Now courtesy of Harris Interactive and Linkedin we have survey data to document the phenomenon and to suggest just how far apart the instincts of marketers are from the interests of their customers. 

By surveying 2025 customers and 1015 advertisers over two days in June 2009, the fault lines have been exposed.

Here are the top line learnings:

1. Marketers think ads that interrupt, prompt stop-and-think or convey information are very effective.  Consumers, by the biggest differential in the survey numbers, don't.  

2. Marketers think ads that look and feel like the content around them work better. 

Consumers don't buy it.

3. Before and after comparisons strike 1/4 of marketers as a good idea. 

Only half as many customers agree.

4. Marketers value frequency and ads that reinforce what is thought to be a known message.

 Consumers aren't so sure.

Marketers and their customers agree that funny ads work better, though there's probably a difference of opinion on their ability to drive sales. And both parties are in agreement that scary ads and ads that try to make you feel guilty rarely work.

Apparently a rotten economy doesn't make marketers better listeners. These days -- when everyone is desperate seeking a deal -- marketers are pushing empathy which is falling on deaf ears. Consumers prefer deals and "value propositions" or "luxuries for less" rather than cheerleading ("we can get through this together") or faux sympathy ("we feel your pain") messages.  

The lesson now documented is that the voice of the customer can be pinpointed. 

The real question is --  will marketers actually listen and act upon what they hear? 

Google's Radio Gaffe Reveals Their Vulnerability

Google's decision to quit radio after investing north of $100 million and 3 years of effort reveals a great deal about the organization and its vulnerabilities. Keep in mind that Google isn't half as benign as it wants you to believe. They didn't become a colossus by being everyone's BFF.

In this case they started out with a good strategic idea -- marry their price-bid auction technology to an existing radio distribution tool and then disinter-mediate media-buying firms, bring down prices and dominate the $19 billion radio advertising market. But as Jessica Vascellaro documented in her comprehensive Wall Street Journal article on May 12th, getting from a big idea to an agile execution wasn't in the cards.

Google purchased dMarc Broadscasting in 2006 and figured it would roll-up into their overall strategy to apply their auction-bid tools systematically to other media markets. They would amortize the R&D costs of the technology, slaughter the existing players in those markets and become the buying conduit of choice across online and offline media. After all, if you're Google you might as well thing big -- really big. 

They got some initial traction and engaged with some of the leading radio firms like Emmis, Clear Channel, Saga and Greater Media. But they underestimated the power of inertia and conventional wisdom in the radio business and basically ignored the concerns and profits of the companies whose inventory they sought to sell.

So what do does this reveal for those of us eager to handicap Google's current and future state?

1. Google is a large hungry bureaucracy. With shifting priorities and plenty of cash to burn on not-so-hot executions, they can afford to try and fail where others can't. They skimped on the due diligence in vetting dMarc's owners as partners. They didn't talk to many radio guys at the outset and they didn't take the time to listen. But in the end flushing $100 million is just a rounding error for Google which allows them to retreat without feeling the pain and probably without absorbing the lessons.

2. Google believes its own press. The bias toward doing it their way, their hubris about how things should be engineered and their complete unwillingness to listen to willing allies, adopt to market norms and nuances or sell the way buyers buy set them up for failure. The radio ad market was a de facto auction long before they showed up, but they refused to see it. This kind of "we know better" attitude is not unique in Silicon Valley or among high tech giants. But it suggests that in some cases they can't get out of their own mindset or out of their own way.

3. Technology Uber Alles. They built and bought the component parts but they could get them to work together nor could they measure and report on sell-thru or the impact of the ads. Their belief in technology as the universal cure blinded them to the marketplace realities and deafened them to course corrections that could have produced an alternative outcome. 

Planning Integrated Campaigns

Digital and social media can extend the use, reach and efficiency of offline messages and campaigns, if we plan them properly. Speaking with classic agency guys recently, it occurred to me in the course of conversation that they still think a spot is just a spot. For big agency types, the notion of integrated messaging has more to do with an inter-agency scrum than with how we can get to and persuade target audiences.

 

If you don’t believe me, consider the case of the Super Bowl where national advertisers spend millions per spot and most still do very little to extend the reach, the echo or the efficiency of this spend into cyberspace. According to the post-game scorecard analysis by Reprise Media, thirty-one percent of Super Bowl advertisers didn’t buy pay-per-click terms to support their TV ads, only 1 in 5 included a call to action in their $3 million dollar spots and just 1 in 4 linked videos or landing pages featuring their creative to social networks like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace or YouTube. This lack of foresight squandered a considerable tailwind from massive traditional Super Bowl publicity and hype plus the expectation that the national championship football game is also the Super Bowl of advertising.    

 

It’s a mindset thing.

 

To optimize the value of a significant creative investment you have to think through all the different ways audiences can access the message and all the different techniques to give the message added legs both to reach additional prospects and to achieve ROI objectives. It helps if you envision what you want the audience to see, feel, think and do and then build out the pathways and channels to let nature take its course.

 

This requires a baseline acceptance of the Web and of social media as genuine vehicles for reach, expression and persuasion. It also demands that marketers look to leverage their investments and wring as much value out of each dollar spent as possible. This task is not only for the media guys; it requires input from everyone to maximize impact.

 

Consider three critical planning steps.

 

Anticipate Audience Response. Ask yourself at the outset -- how will audiences react to the message and what do you want them to do about it? We know that dramatic creative provokes comment, chat, pass-along , blogging and all kinds of sharing. Plan to leverage this by preparing versions in the right formats, seeding the campaign on video and vertical-interest sites, previewing the message for influential journalists and bloggers, cue fan groups and alert brand loyalists. Then buy enough key words for a fixed time period surrounding the flight to help anyone interested find you quickly and easily. If it’s a direct response effort put the URL and the 800 number in prominent positions, build a series of landing pages and make a clear, compelling offer.

 

Use Extenders. Think of pay-per-click, blogs, PR and social media as “Hamburger Helper” for your campaign. These tactics extend the experience beyond the flight, add experiential dimensions for the brand, create buzz and make it easy to find and engage the brand. Their relative cost is minimal compared to the incremental reach and impact they deliver or the momentum they can sustain. Costs can be carefully parsed with smart scheduling and analytics.

 

Consider Context. Every campaign is a surge period. Yet every brand is out there constantly affecting target customers and prospects. If you think of a particular message in this context, you’ll see the value of surrounding and enhancing a campaign with tentacles into social networks, blogs, search, free media and online communities because they provide context and continuity both for brand loyalists and for those you seek to attract to the franchise. Emerging digital media also give you a ready reaction or recovery tool in the event that your audience doesn’t respond as expected or in rare cases when the message doesn’t align with the audience.

 

A spot is no longer just a spot. A campaign no longer stands alone as a point in time.

Real integrated planning requires a different perspective and planning horizon across platforms and media to harness more elements in service to faster, deeper and more effective brand awareness, preference and loyalty building.    

 

How to Survive the New Business Stampede

The layoffs of 2008 will soon give way to a manic new year’s scramble for new business in 2009. Marketers, agencies and consultants of all sizes, shapes and specialties will madly chase a shrinking pool of new assignments and do their darnedest to seduce customers away from their current providers.

What’s new is that business is “out there for the taking” because half of all buyers will be open to switching according to “How Clients Buy” :the 2009 Benchmark Report onProfessional Services Marketing produced by RainToday.com with survey help from the Wellesley Hills Group. The full detailed report is for sale on their site.

Evidently professional relationships aren’t what they used to be. High and changing expectations, a financial crunch and the ready availability of alternatives makes the business development landscape much more fluid that’s it has been before. Add the continuing need for service and reduced ranks of internal marketers and there are more potential openings than most of us might realize. The real question is are new business seekers willing or able to do what it takes to snag the newly available switchers?

So what’s a sales guy to do?

Make it Personal. The top tier methods for getting access to potential switchers are referrals from colleagues or other professionals and providers and/or personal recognition by your prospective client of you or your brand. You have to be out there, visible and know to get your foot in the door. The second tier of access is through presentations or in-person seminars. Again the direction is clear. You have to have something new or different to say and you have to get physically in front of potential customers to say it. The benchmarking data validates the old adage – “people buy people first; then goods and services are transacted.”

You are Your Website. If you are real you have a website explaining who you are and what you uniquely do. Your website is the embodiment of your brand in the customer’s eye. Eighty percent of potential clients look at your website before they decide to contact you. Customers search for you or look at your site to verify your claims, assess your bona fides and/or do the background research on you and your competitors. If your site sucks, so does the perception of you and your offering.

Proactively Reach Out. Too many marketers are afraid of the phone. The digital world is antiseptic and unintrusive. But the response rates and the engagement rates reflect this. The bench mark data suggests that potential switchers are much more open (almost 2 times as open as they were when surveyed in 2005) to phone and webinar contact than ever before. This means you need a good list and have to have something of genuine value to say or offer to entice further conversation.

Blogs and social media are just coming online as sales tools. They are worthy of experimentation but aren’t yet proven vehicles to engage potential new clients. You might get a few ideas by looking at the 14 agency blogs cited by Michael Gass on his Fuel Lines blog.

Focus on Buying Criteria. Way too many marketers get caught up in the features and never sell the benefits. And even more get way too caught up in chest beating and never listen closely enough to prospects to properly tailor the pitch. The reality is  --- clients want you to service them, solve their problems and make them look good. Your entire mission is to convince them that you and your guys can do this faster and better than anyone else.

For eight out of ten buyers, the critical information for sustaining this claim is your brand and personal reputation, your category or vertical industry experience, your task or functional experience and the price you quote. Every other piece of data, every other claim, all those awards, all that other blab is extraneous.

Focus on and clearly demonstrate what you know about their business, which tasks they need that you’ve done successfully a hundred times and be sure to logically show what they will win, in terms of business results – cash, profits, new customers, market share, market penetration – by picking you.

Listen Closely. If you can check you ego at the4 door and discipline yourself to let the prospects speak four words for each one you utter, most clients will sooner or later really tell you what they want. In the bench mark survey almost 4 in 10 complained that potential service partners didn’t listen to them, didn’t understand them or didn’t respond in a timely manner. If you can’t do these basic things, don’t bother to suit up for the sales game because you’ll never win.    

Good Luck and Happy New Year.

Will Seinfeld Save Vista for Microsoft?

Microsoft's choice of Jerry Seinfeld to combat attacks from Apple and to promote the Vista operating system raises the question: can advertising trump customer experience? Can America's favorite mainstream comedian talk people out of their anger, frustration or ambivalence about Microsoft and its product set?

This is a classic test of the value of advertising.

Vista isn't really ready for prime time. But Ballmer & Company didn't really seem to care and using their sales muscle they have captured a huge share and convinced users ranging from global enterprises to individuals to switch to the new thing. From Day One serious techies pointed out all the issues and flaws.

Since then simpletons like me have installed and un-installed it because it made us crazy. Maybe we're just too damn stupid to work it or maybe we're just so set in our ways that we can't overcome our comfortability with Windows XP and all its flaws. Or maybe its just not designed to be easy. Either way many of us had a rotten customer experience that's why the product, and by extention Microsoft, has a mediocre reputation.

Apple has implied this in their clever TV spots which use caricatures to represent the brands. Leveraging their reputation for hot consumer products and painting Microsoft as out-of-touch, Apple has celebrated its innovations and the widespread belief that Safari is much easier to use and much more powerful than Vista. This is completely a game of perceptions. I have no idea which system is actually more powerful or has the best technology or the soundest code base. I just know Vista sucks from my narrow, half-wit user perspective.

So now we have two corporate titans taking on each other by using advertising to position, refresh and sell-in their brands. Investing $10 million in the services of Jerry Seinfeld, according to the Wall Street Journal, the battle pits creative hot shop Crispin Porter + Bogusky against TBWA/Chiat/Day, Apple's long time agency. The $300 million campaign breaks September 4th, unless its leaks earlier on YouTube.

I can hardly wait to see what Jerry can possibly say or do -- alone or with Bill Gates -- to change our minds. Stay Tuned.

Getting the Message Right: Return to the Obvious

Every marketer gets carried away by a big idea. Unfortunately most of those ideas aren't articulated clearly enough to make a selling difference.They ignore the obvious basics.

In a world where prospects have limitless options, endless choices for information and countless proffered deals, he who crafts the differentiated message that is clear, stands apart from the crowd and resonates wins.

But how do you get to the message? You walk back the cat starting with your customer's problem. Every product or service solves a problem. Every campaign, every great slogan, every persuasive pitch begins by understanding the genuine problem and mapping whatever you are or whatever you have to it. If you skip this part, nothing can save you.

Doubt me? Read "Optimizing Sales Messaging: the Impact of What You Say on Sales Performance" a white paper by CSO Insights. This benchmark survey documents that he who frames the message properly sells better.

The first and monumental thinking task is to quickly identify that problem you are solving and then convince yourself that you can solve the problem; hopefully better than anyone else. Then you have to explain it in a way that your prospect will understand, relate to and desire. It helps if they desire it sooner rather than later and are willing to pay the asking price.

I know -- its basic and obvious. But if I had a nickel for everyone I work with that skips this step and starts blathering about features and benefits, starts imagining dancing bananas or animated monkeys singing or the funniest jokes or the wackiest sight gags, I'd be rich already.

Bottom line: If you don't clearly stand out from the crowd, you don't get noticed. You can't get there by sounding, acting or talking like everybody else in your segment. Customers need a clear, concise reason why to pick you and why to act now. It all goes back to how you can solve their problem or relieve their pain.