Book Summary of Ogilvy On Advertising by David Ogilvy

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David Ogilvy founded his own advertising agency in 1949 after working as a salesman, copywriter, and adman for years. His agency became one of the world’s most successful, and in 1985, he wrote Ogilvy on Advertising, a comprehensive guide to marketing, creating effective ads, and the industry as a whole.

Marketing and Product Development

To increase sales, good products are crucial. Research is important to determine preferences for smells, colors, flavors, features, and packaging. Quality improvement, balancing convention and novelty, and an appropriate price with promotions can also help. A memorable name and successful launch are key. Focus on successes and convince consumers to try the product.

The Craft of Advertising

Advertising aims to increase profit by attracting new customers or encouraging existing customers to buy more. Effective advertising can significantly boost sales, even for products that already sell well. To create good ads, follow these steps:

  1. Learn about the product to generate associations and potential benefits.
  2. Study competitor’s ads, particularly direct-response ads.
  3. Use research to understand your target audience, product promise, promotions, and media.
  4. Choose a brand image.
  5. By researching and allowing your mind to naturally make connections, you may come up with grand, timeless concepts.
  6. Spotlight the product and make it the star, even if it’s not unique.
  7. Stay away from committee work. The final advertisement frequently says nothing significant since committees frequently confuse issues and demand compromise.

Print Advertising

Print ads are ads in magazines, newspapers or on posters. There are five key elements to consider when creating a print ad: headline, imagery, copy, coupon, and layout.

  1. A great headline is essential as most people read only the headline.
  2. Effective imagery makes the reader curious or tells a story.
  3. Good copy should use the second person, be simple, interesting and specific, and include a story or consumer testimonials.
  4. Coupons should contain a small image, the promise, and the brand name.
  5. The layout should be easy to read and resemble an editorial page to increase readership.

TV Advertising

TV advertising is about commercials and there are six key elements to consider when creating them. These include the structure, the brand and product name, visuals, sound, supers (text overlaid on the video), and costs.

Effective commercials have a “slice of life” structure, feature unusual characters, and are funny, sentimental, fact-based, or newsworthy. It’s important to mention the brand name early and often, show someone using the product, and show the product and packaging at the end.

Use sound effects and avoid voiceovers, and add supers to reiterate your message. Finally, reduce costs by cutting unnecessary complications.

Radio Advertising

When the book was published, radio advertising only accounted for 6% of U.S. advertising and its effectiveness was difficult to measure. Based on a pilot study and his own observations, Ogilvy offers five tips for creating effective radio ads:

  1. Capture people’s attention with surprises, humor, or charm.
  2. Speak to the audience in a conversational manner.
  3. Mention the brand name and promise early in the commercial.
  4. Repeat the brand name and promise throughout the commercial.
  5. Create multiple commercials to avoid listener annoyance and maximize exposure.

Specific Types of Advertising

There are challenges specific to certain types of products, services, and companies, including:

  1. Corporate advertising can improve a company’s reputation, recruitment efforts, and more, but requires a longer-term commitment and legislative advertising may not be considered a business expense.
  2. Tourism advertising involves navigating politics and stereotypes about the country being advertised.
  3. Cause advertising may not bring in much money, but can raise awareness and lead to successful personal solicitation.
  4. Commodity products lack uniqueness, so it’s best to differentiate your company rather than the product by offering lower cost, better quality, or service.

Industry Overview

Working in Advertising

To succeed in the competitive advertising industry, one must have passion. Agency work involves various roles such as copywriters, art directors, account executives, researchers, media buyers, creative directors, and CEOs. Copywriters create written content, art directors handle visuals, account executives act as intermediaries, researchers analyze effectiveness, media departments buy ad space, creative directors oversee production, and CEOs manage and attract clients.

Running an Advertising Agency

To run a successful agency, you need: talented and skilled staff, a solid understanding of office politics, high standards of conduct, a payment system, good investments, and clients.

  • To ensure a talented staff, recruit people smarter than you and with different talents.
  • To avoid politics, fire the worst offenders and organize team-building activities. Set high standards of conduct, including client confidentiality and only using clients’ products.
  • Choose a payment system that suits your agency. Good investments include opening new offices or purchasing your office building.
  • Attract new clients by producing good advertising for existing clients, and use successful work to show potential clients.

To attract new clients, Ogilvy recommends the following:

  1. Give presentations to convince clients to hire your agency, and send a follow-up letter summarizing why they should choose you.
  2. Advertise your agency through direct mail or consistent space advertising.
  3. Sign up multinational accounts to potentially gain worldwide opportunities.

However, Ogilvy also advises caution when taking on new clients. Avoid or drop clients who can’t pay, have a different company culture, are failing, or are bullies.

Finding an Agency

To find the right advertising agency, start by reviewing ads in magazines and on TV that you admire. Create a list of agencies responsible for those ads and eliminate those working with your competitors. Meet with the heads and creative directors of the remaining agencies and ask to see their top six print and TV ads. Choose the agency with the most compelling campaigns and offer to pay 1% more than their usual fee and sign a five-year contract to secure their services.

Public Opinion on Advertising

Critics rank adpeople as low as car salespeople in honesty, but Ogilvy argues that advertising is not inherently immoral and can have positive effects.

Ads go through many levels of approval before running, except for political advertising, which can be dishonest. Advertising may only convince someone to buy an inferior product once. Agencies were creating less informative ads and billboards were considered dangerous and ugly at the time of writing.

Book Summary of The Ultimate Sales Letter by Dan Kennedy

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Dan Kennedy’s The Ultimate Sales Letter teaches effective strategies for crafting compelling sales letters that drive sales. The book provides timeless foundational strategies in persuasive writing that remain relevant in today’s ever-changing sales and marketing landscape. Kennedy is a self-made millionaire and successful copywriter who believes anyone can learn to write persuasive copy and turn it into profit with self-belief, intuition, and product knowledge.

Our guide simplifies and categorizes Dan Kennedy’s tips and strategies into two main parts:

1) Collecting necessary information to create a potent sales letter and

2) Creating an enticing sales letter.

Furthermore, we compare and contrast Kennedy’s ideas with current suggestions from other experts in the sales and marketing field.

Part 1: Gather Your Sales Letter Intel

In this segment, we’ll cover the groundwork that Kennedy recommends for crafting a persuasive sales letter. We’ll begin with identifying and comprehending your intended audience, followed by gaining extensive knowledge of your product.

Step 1: Identify and Understand Your Target Customer

To write an effective sales letter, Kennedy stresses the importance of understanding your target customer’s interests, concerns, and communication style. He advises researching their demographics, trends, and past experiences with similar products. Gathering information can be done through industry immersion, attending trade shows, and speaking with those who have insights into your customer base.

Step 2: Know Your Product

Kennedy emphasizes the importance of becoming thoroughly familiar with your product to showcase its benefits and address any drawbacks in your sales letter. He recommends using your product extensively, testing it, taking it apart, talking to people who use it, and examining competitive products. This process helps you identify its best features and benefits, which you can prioritize and highlight in your sales letter based on the unique needs and interests of your target customers.

Kennedy insists that addressing your product’s limitations in your sales letter is crucial to alleviate any customer concerns and maintain their interest in purchasing.

He recommends two tactics for handling potential buyer questions:

1) Share results from research conducted on consumers who didn’t buy your product, list every reason given for not purchasing, and provide solutions for each issue.

2) Offer a list of frequently asked questions and their corresponding answers. Kennedy suggests reinforcing these tactics with testimonials and stories highlighting your product’s strengths, or offering guarantees and free trial offers to encourage customers to try your product.

Part 2: Craft Your Sales Letter

After discussing the necessary background information in the previous section, we will now delve into five key steps to create a compelling sales letter that captures customers’ attention and motivates them to buy your product. Finally, we’ll discuss strategies for effectively distributing your well-crafted letter to your target audience.

Step 1: Compose your first article

After gathering all the necessary information about your customer and product, Kennedy advises that the first step in creating your sales letter is to start writing, without worrying about perfection or editing.

Step 2: Capture, Interact, Persuade, and Compel

To shape your sales letter effectively, Kennedy recommends four key goals: capture, interact, persuade, and compel your customer. Here are his recommendations for achieving each:

  • To Capture: Start your letter by addressing a problem your product solves, using attention-grabbing headlines and teasers.
  • To Interact: Use short sentences and paragraphs, and break language conventions by utilizing exclamation points, trendy terms, and unusual punctuation.
  • To Persuade: Highlight the benefits and features of your product, using customer testimonials, stories, and data to back up your claims.
  • To Compel: Provide a clear call-to-action, such as a limited-time offer, guarantee, or free trial, to motivate customers to respond immediately.

Kennedy offers two strategies to de-emphasize price in your sales letter and shift the focus to reasons why customers should buy your product. The first strategy is to pitch the value or savings customers will experience and emphasize long-term benefits. The second strategy is to use persuasion techniques such as implying that smart people buy your product or offering product guarantees.

Step 3: Refine, Finalize, and Send Your Letter

To finalize your letter and ensure it reaches your target customer, follow these tips from Kennedy:

  • Add a persuasive PS at the end of your letter.
  • Edit your letter for clarity and remove irrelevant phrases.
  • Make your letter visually appealing by emphasizing key points with bold, highlighting or capital letters.
  • Test your letter by reading it out loud, getting feedback from others, and comparing it to similar letters.
  • Personalize your packaging for executives with high-quality paper and exclusive language, or use colorful, interactive materials for mass mailings.
  • Hand-address the envelope, omit the name of the return address, and utilize postage instead of metered mail to prevent it from seeming like junk mail.
  • For delivery assurance, select Federal express or first-class mail.
  • Once you’ve made the final edits, send out your letter and wait for the response.

Kennedy suggests strategic ways to use your sales letter, such as sending follow-up letters to improve response rates and using the letter for lead identification, telemarketing, and event announcements. Despite changes in communication channels, Kennedy argues that written sales letters remain effective, and a combination of online and offline sales letters is best. Additionally, a combination of video sales strategies, including commercials and sales letters, can further enhance effectiveness.

Book Summary of Positioning by Al Ries

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Al Ries and Jack Trout’s book, ‘Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind,’ offers marketing tips based on their over 20 years of experience. The book, published in 1981, is the first of many collaborations between the authors, who are experts on marketing strategy. We’ll explore their definition of positioning and techniques, and discuss how it can be applied to career development.

What Is Positioning?

Ries and Trout define “positioning” as shaping customer perceptions of your product in comparison to competitors. A product’s “position” is its unique identity in consumers’ minds. For example, a Ferrari is a luxury sports car, while a Corvette is an iconic sports car that’s more affordable than a Ferrari. These mental associations represent each product’s “position.”

What Does Positioning Look Like?

Positioning is primarily achieved through advertising, which serves as a means of communication according to Ries and Trout. To shape perceptions of your product, you must convey a message that affects how people view it relative to other products.

However, the authors acknowledge that advertising can be intrusive since we are inundated with countless ads from various sources, leading us to tune most of them out.

Guidelines for Positioning-Based Advertising

Ries and Trout offer three recommendations for crafting effective ads that can break through the mental filter and shape customer perception.

  1. Firstly, simplify the message, as our brains can only store and process a limited amount of information.
  2. Secondly, align your message with your customer’s existing understanding of reality, as people are more likely to accept messages that confirm their beliefs.
  3. Lastly, maintain a consistent message over time, as people are resistant to changing their minds, while updating your ads to keep them current.

Preliminary Positioning Strategy

Ries and Trout emphasize the importance of three factors to successfully position your product:

  1. Firstly, comprehending your present position.
  2. Secondly, identifying a feasible and desired position.
  3. Lastly, selecting a name that aligns with the desired position.
  4. Comprehending Your Present Position

Ries and Trout caution that it is crucial to understand how your potential customers perceive your business and how your competitors compare. They also advise investing in research, such as surveys, to gain clarity and make informed decisions.

2- Identifying A Feasible and Desired Position

Ries and Trout advise having a realistic and clear vision of the position you desire for your product. Ideally, positioning as a market leader is recommended as it offers various benefits like brand loyalty, ease of attracting good employees, and higher stock prices. Being a leading product/company helps in creating self-perpetuating success.

Ries and Trout suggest that market leaders have significant advantages and become entrenched, making it difficult for competitors to supplant them with a better product. Instead, they recommend becoming the first to occupy the leading position by finding or creating a niche where you can make a credible claim of market leadership. This often involves sacrificing your product’s general appeal to target a niche where you can be the first to claim leadership.

Find Your Niche

By changing various facets of your product or advertising to stand out, Ries and Trout offer the following strategies for finding an open niche:

  • Product Size: Offer a miniature version if the industry trend is towards large products, or vice versa.
  • Price: Create premium or economy versions of a product to offer profitable niche opportunities.
  • Demographics: Tailor your product and advertising to appeal to an untapped gender or age group.
  • Setting: Target your product for use in a particular place, climate, season, or time of day.
  • Distribution: Consider novel approaches to enhance your customers’ shopping experiences, such creative packaging.
  1. Selecting A Name That Aligns with The Desired Position

Ries and Trout stress the significance of a product’s name for positioning, as it’s what consumers use to mentally position it in the market. The name should be unique, memorable, and representative of the positioning strategy.

Additionally, they advise that a company name should accurately reflect the company’s role and that an outdated or non-representative name can hinder growth.

Consider Your Abbreviations

Ries and Trout caution against using awkward acronyms and recommend creating phonetic ones, such as NASA, for better memorability. However, acronyms should align with your positioning strategy and avoid sounding contradictory to your message, as in the case of using “FAT” for a fitness program.

Additional Naming Pitfalls

Ries and Trout warn that unclear names hinder product positioning. Customers struggle to mentally place them in the market landscape, making it vital to choose a name that reflects the product’s market position. For example, “W Magazine” can be misleading as it covers art and fashion, not finances or women’s issues.

  • Ries and Trout warn that names can become outdated as cultures and businesses evolve. Even if a product or company remains the same, changes in language or culture can make a name obsolete and less effective in resonating with prospective customers.
  • Ries and Trout suggest changing technical product names developed by engineers before bringing them to the market, as such names are often meaningless to outsiders.
  • Ries and Trout suggest that having a name too similar to a competitor’s name can make it challenging to establish your own distinct position in the market.

Positioning Strategy

Once you’ve assessed your current position, envisioned a realistic goal, and confirmed your name aligns with it, how can you solidify your position as the market leader? Ries and Trout offer various strategies depending on whether you’re already the leader or striving to become one.

Strategy for an Established Market Leader

To maintain market leadership, reinforcing your position may suffice. But, Ries and Trout suggest that advertising your product as the best won’t persuade customers. They recommend promoting yourself as the original and genuine article. As leaders usually occupy their positions first, this claim is credible and suggests competing products are imitations, giving people a reason to buy from you.

Strategy for an Aspiring Market Leader

If you’ve found a valuable, unexplored niche, you can become a market leader by creating a product that meets demand, choosing a fitting name, and launching a successful ad campaign, according to Ries and Trout. However, they emphasize the importance of meeting customer expectations and repositioning the competition in this scenario.

Appeal to Expectations

To effectively communicate a message, it’s best to align with people’s expectations. Ries and Trout suggest that if you introduce a new product, it’s essential to compare it to something familiar to consumers. They use the example of marketing early cars as “horseless carriages.”

Reposition the Competition

To gain a market advantage, Ries and Trout advise discrediting competitors by repositioning their product. Merely claiming superiority is ineffective. Instead, expose a deficiency in the current leading product to create an opening for a new niche leader. Ries and Trout note that bad news about a competitor is more effective than good news about your product. For example, a pharmaceutical company can highlight side effects of gender-neutral vaccines on women’s health to promote a new flu vaccine.

Strategy for an Established Leader Entering a New Market

If you’re a market leader with one product and want to launch a new one in a different sector, Ries and Trout advise creating a new brand for the new product. This avoids the pitfalls of line extensions, which we’ll discuss next.

The Pitfalls of Line Extensions

“Line extension” is a term used by Ries and Trout to describe adding new products to an existing line under the same name. Products are distinguished with descriptions or other qualifiers. While line extensions provide instant brand recognition and save on marketing costs, Ries and Trout advise against them due to brand dilution and internal competition.

Brand Dilution

Ries and Trout argue that line extensions weaken a brand’s position by diluting its collective essence. A brand associated with diverse products and market positions becomes harder for customers to identify, and thus weaker. For example, if Ferrari started selling economical cars, it would dilute its high-end sports car brand and lose its meaning.

Professional Positioning for Career Success

Ries and Trout believe that the principles of positioning can be applied to advance one’s career. The strategy they recommend includes understanding your current position, identifying your desired position, selecting a suitable name, and charting a course to your desired position.

Understanding your current position involves being aware of how others perceive your strengths and weaknesses. To identify your desired position, you need to realistically determine what professional positioning you want, and this might involve finding an open niche.

Your name is also an important element of how people perceive you, and Ries and Trout recommend avoiding initials and using a name that supports your desired positioning.

Charting a course involves finding a good fit between your values and goals and your company’s vision and goals. In applying for new positions, you should emphasize how your strengths match the company’s strengths.

Ries and Trout stress the need for persistence in positioning as it is a long-term endeavor.

Book Summary of Contagious by Jonah Berger

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Contagious by Jonah Berger suggests that word of mouth is the key to making things popular. For something to be contagious, it must be interesting enough to spark conversations. Berger offers tips on how to use word of mouth to popularize products, art, articles, and ideas.

  1. Part One of our guide examines Berger’s reasoning for why word of mouth reigns as the top influencer of popularity.
  2. Part Two delves into his three-step approach for generating word of mouth: attract, engage, and benefit your audience.

Our insights will include a blend of psychological research and alternative viewpoints, providing a more nuanced perspective on Berger’s strategies. Additionally, we’ll showcase real-life examples and offer practical tips on how to tailor them to your own product or concept.

Part 1: The Source of Popularity

Berger’s analysis centers on the origins of widespread popularity, encompassing ideas, products, and internet content. He puts forth two key assertions: firstly, the traditional assumption that three factors underlie popularity falls short of capturing its essence; and secondly, popularity stems from word of mouth.

Conventional Wisdom

Berger introduces the typical views on product popularity, which commonly attribute it to three factors: affordability, quality, and advertising volume. Yet, he posits that while these factors may play a role, they aren’t the decisive aspect that determines popularity, meaning they can’t solely generate it.

Word of Mouth and Popularity

Berger identifies word of mouth as the genuine catalyst of popularity. It’s frequent, trustworthy, and targeted.

People frequently discuss products they’re interested in, trust personal recommendations, and word of mouth automatically targets an interested audience, further amplifying its popularity.

Part 2: Generating Word of Mouth | Step 1: Attract Your Audience

Berger proceeds to outline how to stimulate word of mouth. He presents six principles that we’ve divided into three key steps:

  1. Capture your audience’s attention
  2. Engage your audience
  3. Add value for your audience

Initially, Berger suggests two marketing tactics to attract your target audience: creating public visibility and utilizing effective triggers.

Method #1: Create Public Visibility

To attract an audience, Berger suggests making your product visible in public. When people see your product frequently, they begin to think about it more often. To ensure visibility, prominently display your product’s name or logo, as seen on computers, sneakers, and headphones. If public use isn’t feasible, find an alternative way to display your product, such as offering a free branded item like a water bottle to customers.

Method #2: Use Effective Triggers

Use effective triggers to promote your product. Triggers are reminders that link to something else and automatically make people think of your product. For example, an ice cream brand can associate their product with sunny weather, making sunny weather a trigger that reminds people of their brand.

Berger suggests that an effective trigger needs to be relevant for a long time so that people encounter it frequently. To achieve this, he offers two methods:

  • Make the trigger highly relevant to people’s everyday lives by connecting it to a common phrase, activity, or feature of an area. For example, a business based in New York City connects its product to traffic jams, which its target audience encounters frequently.
  • Ensure that the trigger will remain relevant for weeks, months, and even years into the future. This creates a more effective trigger than one that connects your product to a temporary trend or uncommon occurrence, such as vampires around Halloween.

Step #2: Engage Your Audience

Berger stresses that merely attracting an audience is insufficient, as you need to sustain their interest in your product to generate word-of-mouth.

Method #1: Inspire an Emotional Response

Berger suggests evoking high-arousal emotions like anger, anxiety, awe, amusement, and excitement to generate word of mouth. Marketing can use humor, breathtaking photos, or other methods to inspire these emotions and motivate people to talk about the product.

Method #2: Tell a Story

Berger suggests integrating your product into a captivating story to engage your audience and generate word-of-mouth. For example, PepsiCo’s Superbowl commercial in 2019 made their product an essential part of the story by using the phrase “Is Pepsi okay?” as a central theme.

Step #3: Benefit Your Audience

Berger advises that in addition to attracting and engaging your audience, it’s essential to offer them something valuable that motivates them to talk about your product.

Benefit #1: Social Currency

Berger suggests that your product should give customers “social currency” by making them look interesting and influential when they talk about it. If talking about your product doesn’t make someone look good, they’re unlikely to generate much word of mouth.

Berger suggests three ways to make your product or idea a source of social currency: making it remarkable, applying game mechanics, and using scarcity and exclusivity.

Making Your Product or Idea Remarkable

Berger suggests making your product remarkable by highlighting its unique or innovative features, as people enjoy talking about extraordinary things that make them seem remarkable as well, increasing their social currency. Gillette’s launch of the world’s first five-blade razor in 2006 is an example of a remarkable product that was prominently featured in their marketing.

Applying Game Mechanics

Berger advises using “game mechanics” to your product or service, such as reward points or bonuses for frequent customers, to create a sense of accomplishment. When customers feel a sense of achievement, they are more likely to talk about it, thus generating word of mouth and increasing social currency.

Using Scarcity and Exclusivity

Berger suggests that scarcity can create social currency and generate word of mouth by making customers feel exclusive. By indicating limited supply or potential sellouts, customers may boast about their exclusive status, generating interest in the product. For example, first-class airplane seats provide extra benefits, making passengers feel special and likely to share their experience with others.

Benefit #2: Provide Practical Value

Berger suggests that one way to generate word of mouth is by making your product or service useful and providing practical value. This could include things like money-saving tips or life hacks that make people’s lives easier. When people find something useful, they are likely to share it with their friends and family, which can lead to more word of mouth about your product or service.

Berger suggests two ways to make your product a source of practical value that generates word of mouth: offering discounts and providing useful information.

Discounts can save people money and motivate them to tell others about your product. Providing practical tips or advice can also make people eager to share with their friends and family, creating word of mouth. Berger recommends limiting the information to three or four simple and engaging points at a time to ensure that people will read it and find it interesting.

Additionally, sharing information about how your product solves common problems can also be an effective way to generate word of mouth.

Book Summary of Purple Cow by Seth Godin

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Seth Godin and his family were thrilled to see many cows during their vacation in France. But soon, the excitement faded away as all the cows looked the same. They realized that only a purple cow would be remarkable and exciting.

This principle applies to product development and marketing. Creating an ordinary product like all the others won’t grab attention. You need a remarkable and exciting product, a Purple Cow, to stand out.

Mass Marketing Doesn’t Work Anymore

Traditional mass marketing techniques like TV commercials and newspaper ads are no longer as effective as they used to be because people today have less money, time, and attention to spare. Trying to target as many people as possible is not the way to go, as most of them won’t even listen to you.

To get attention for your product, you need to target the right people who fall into a bell curve: the innovators and early adopters, who will then market your product to the majority. Your Purple Cow must be remarkable enough to attract the innovators and flexible enough to appeal to the majority, once they hear about it from a source they trust.

Find Your Cow by Taking Risks

To find your Purple Cow, you need to look for extremes in your products, advertisements, image, and pricing. Identify the absolute limits of possibility, even if you don’t plan to go that far. Playing it safe is risky in today’s world of brown cows, and copying someone else’s success won’t make your product remarkable.

You need to stand out and catch the attention of innovators and early adopters who will spread the word. The Four Seasons and Motel 6 are examples of exceptional brands that succeeded by being opposite extremes in the hotel industry.

What Remarkable Doesn’t Mean

Common misconceptions about remarkability include mistaking “good” for remarkable, thinking that being ridiculous is the same as being remarkable, and relying on cheap pricing to make a product remarkable.

Good products with broad appeal are often boring and more likely to fail. Being ridiculous may attract attention, but not the right kind. Similarly, cheap pricing is not enough to make a product remarkable and can lead to a price war with competitors.

What’s Next?

Creating a single remarkable product isn’t enough to sustain a business forever. Milk it for all it’s worth by passing it on to another team and extracting maximum profits.

Then, invest the profits into developing your next big thing. Keep the Purple Cow cycle going to stay at the forefront of your industry.

But don’t churn out mediocre products just for the sake of it. Wait until you have your next remarkable idea. Remember, playing it safe is the riskiest move in today’s age of the Purple Cow.

Book Summary of Building a Storybrand by Donald Miller

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Donald Miller’s Building a StoryBrand teaches how to create effective marketing by using a story structure that portrays the customer as the hero and demonstrates how your brand can help them achieve their goals.

Miller’s formula helps create a clear and consistent marketing story that shows how your brand can help customers achieve their desired outcomes. This guide highlights common marketing mistakes and how storytelling can fix them, while also covering the seven-part story structure and implementing it in different marketing channels.

The Two Errors That Cause Marketing Material to Fail

Miller identifies two common errors that marketers tend to make while creating marketing material, primarily because they overlook how the human brain processes information.

Error #1: Brands Don’t Articulate How They Help People Stay Alive or Prosper

Miller asserts that a brand’s marketing must show how it supports human survival or prosperity, or it risks failure. The human brain prioritizes basic needs like food and shelter, and then focuses on self-esteem, purpose, and self-actualization. Therefore, customers engage only with marketing that demonstrates a brand’s ability to help them survive or prosper.

Error #2: Brands Force Customers to Waste Calories Parsing

Miller notes that a common mistake brand make is overwhelming customers with irrelevant information, leading to disengagement. This information lacks relevance to the customer’s basic needs of survival or prosperity, causing them to disregard it and focus on more critical activities.

How to Correct the Errors: Create a Story

To address the common errors brands make, Miller suggests using a story format to communicate brand information. This approach focuses on demonstrating the brand’s contribution to customers’ survival and prosperity while eliminating irrelevant information.

Create a Story Using a Marketing Outline

Miller suggests using his StoryBrand 7-Part Framework, also known as the marketing outline, to craft a compelling story. This outline is based on the traditional storytelling structure used in commercial films. By using this approach, you can develop a “BrandScript” or storyline that narrates the customer’s journey. Once you have a storyline, you can use it to create marketing content.

Three Benefits of Using the Marketing Outline

Miller argues that the marketing outline provides three key advantages: ease of use, cohesiveness, and repeatability.

  • Firstly, you can effortlessly plug your company’s details into the outline to create a storyline.
  • Secondly, the outline ensures a unified message that can be adjusted for various products, services, or departments, minimizing customer confusion and contradictions in marketing.
  • Thirdly, having a consistent message allows for easy communication across marketing platforms and to employees.

The Seven Parts of the Marketing Outline

To better understand the marketing outline, let’s examine each of its parts.

Part 1: The Customer-Protagonist Wants Something

Miller suggests starting the story by highlighting what the customer wants and the gap between their current state and fulfilling that desire. This creates a sense of urgency in the customer to fill that gap, for example, by using your design services to transform their barren backyard into a lush landscape.

The Want Must Be Related to Staying Alive or Prospering

Miller emphasizes the importance of connecting your customer’s want to staying alive or prospering. Here are six wants that achieve this goal, according to Miller: saving or acquiring money, saving time, building community, acquiring status, creating opportunities to be generous, and finding meaning.

Customers require money, time, community, status, generosity, and meaning for survival and success.

Part 2: The Customer-Protagonist Encounters a Problem

Miller advises identifying a specific problem that your product or service solves and presenting it as a villain in the story to make it relatable to customers. For example, your online grocery delivery tool can defeat the villain of waiting in line at the grocery store.

Three Levels of Problems

Miller claims there are three levels of problems to include in your storyline:

  1. External problems, such as long grocery store lines, are tangible and straightforward for brands to solve.
  2. Internal problems, such as a lack of time, are unpleasant internal states that motivate customers to take action but are harder for brands to identify.
  3. Philosophical problems are universal questions of meaning and justice, often expressed using “should” statements.

The Best Stories Address All Three Levels of Problems

To craft a compelling story, Miller suggests showcasing how your brand solves the customer’s problem on all three levels: external, internal, and philosophical. For example, a grocery delivery service resolves the problem of wasting time waiting in line (external), relieves the frustration of not having enough time (internal), and restores balance to the customer’s life (philosophical).

Part 3: The Brand-Mentor Steps In to Help

Miller suggests that a brand needs to display competence and empathy to build trust with the customer-protagonist. Competence is demonstrated by providing solutions and showcasing expertise, while empathy is shown by understanding emotions and offering support. These qualities help the brand become a trusted mentor and guide for the customer’s journey towards their goals.

Miller advises that brands should demonstrate two key qualities to earn their customers’ trust as a mentor: compassion and competence.

Compassion means understanding and acknowledging the customer’s problem and showing a willingness to help.

Competence, on the other hand, involves demonstrating that the brand has successfully mentored others before. One way to establish competence is by showcasing customer testimonials in marketing materials.

Part #4: The Brand-Mentor Offers a Plan to The Customer-Protagonist

After establishing yourself as the customer’s mentor, provide a clear and concise plan to help them overcome their problem through the use of your product or service, advises Miller. Customers may hesitate to make a purchase due to confusion and fear, but a well-presented plan can eliminate these obstacles and encourage them to take the risk.

Miller suggests two plan types to alleviate customer confusion and fear: Instructional Plans and Promise Plans.

Instructional Plans provide clear, step-by-step instructions for purchasing and using your product, while Promise Plans list the promises you make to your customers about your business practices.

Part 5: The Brand-Mentor Urges the Customer-Protagonist to Take Action

To encourage customers to make a purchase, Miller advises explicitly and repeatedly calling them to action. Boldness and repetition show confidence in your product and help customers understand what you want them to do. Don’t be afraid to appear insistent in your marketing materials, as customers tend to choose the brand that is clear about its intentions.

For a successful call to action, be clear and direct with your customer about what you want them to do, whether it’s buying or engaging with your brand, advises Miller.

Call to Action #1: A Call to Buy

Employ calls that are clear and straightforward, such as “Purchase Now!” or “Apply Now!” to encourage customers to make a purchase. Place the call to buy button prominently on your website and marketing materials and use different colors, fonts, or sizes to draw attention to it.

Call to Action #2: A Call to Engage

Offer helpful information that positions you as a competent mentor to your customers, without necessarily funneling them towards a sale. Examples of calls to engage include educational PDFs or video series, samples of your product, or test runs. This will help customers think of you when they do need your product in the future.

Part 6: The Negative Stakes of Not Taking Action

After calling your customer to action, Miller suggests highlighting the negative consequences of not acting to create a sense of urgency.

For example, explaining how bad posture can lead to back problems and how chiropractic services can help prevent this. However, it’s important to strike a balance and avoid creating too much anxiety, as it can repulse customers, or too little, as it won’t create enough of an urge to buy.

Part 7: The Happy Ending of Following the Plan

Miller stresses the need to show customers a clear and positive outcome of purchasing your product, emphasizing simplicity and specificity. Customers want to know how your product will improve their lives, so avoid vague or complex statements. For example, use a specific tagline and show people enjoying life to advertise a bone-strengthening supplement.

The Transformation: How Do You Help Your Customer Change for the Better?

Miller emphasizes the importance of a customer’s transformation in marketing. By positioning your brand as an enabler of transformation, you become more than just a brand. Consider your customer’s aspirational identity and reward their progress once they achieve it.

Implement Your Storyline

Miller suggests transferring the storyline you created to your marketing materials. By implementing the storyline in your marketing, you can attract more customers to your brand.

Miller suggests implementing the storyline in six ways:

  1. Overhaul your website: Your website should have only essential information and everything should be inspired by your storyline.
  2. Write a brand logline: Create a short and memorable phrase that answers the question: “What does your company do?” Use elements from your storyline such as the customer-protagonist, the problem, the plan, and the happy ending.
  3. Start an automated email campaign: Create an automated campaign consisting of four pre-written emails to ensure your brand remains top of mind for customers. The goal is to make customers think of you first when they need a product or service.
  4. Showcase testimonials of transformation: Share customer testimonials that describe how your product transformed their life for the better. Ask questions that prompt the reader to describe a transformation.
  5. Create a referral program: Offer rewards to customers who refer new business to you.
  6. Advertise on social media: Use social media platforms to reach your target audience and share your storyline with them.

Book Summary of The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman

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The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman provides a detailed guide on business operations, identifying five critical processes that support any business: creating value, marketing, sales, delivering value, and managing finances. Kaufman also recommends strategies to optimize these processes for achieving success.

This guide covers Kaufman’s recommendations for managing the five business processes in four parts, with a focus on finance throughout:

  • Part 1: Create valuable solutions
  • Part 2: Attract attention
  • Part 3: Drive sales
  • Part 4: Deliver satisfaction

Part #1: Create Value That Satisfies Needs

Kaufman emphasizes that successful businesses must prioritize providing value in exchange for something.

In Part 1 of the guide, we’ll cover the five fundamental needs driving people’s desires, how they assess the value of products/services, and ways businesses can provide valuable solutions. Additionally, we’ll highlight the importance of researching the profitability of potential products/services before developing them.

People Want to Fulfill Their Basic Needs

Kaufman asserts that despite appearing to have diverse preferences, people buy products/services to fulfill five basic needs:

  1. To feel good about themselves by improving their well-being, appearance, status, and satisfying their sensory desires.
  2. To connect with others, romantically, platonically, and professionally, both online and offline.
  3. To learn and grow, academically/professionally, and pursue hobbies/interests.
  4. To feel safe by protecting themselves, loved ones, and possessions from potential threats.
  5. To avoid effort by eliminating tasks that consume too much time, energy, or require specialized knowledge/resources.

Schools of Thought on What Motivates Us to Want Things

Understanding the motivations and timing of consumer decisions is essential for psychologists and marketing specialists, although Kaufman’s needs discussion doesn’t cover how we prioritize them.

By combining Kaufman’s list with four theories, we can explain why we desire certain things and how we prioritize them. Alderfer’s ERG theory groups our basic needs into three categories: Existence, Relatedness, and Growth. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs categorizes our needs into five levels: Physiological, Safety, Love and Belonging, Esteem, and Self-Actualization.

Murray’s Psychogenic Needs

According to this theory, basic needs are divided into two categories: Primary needs, such as the need for food and water, are essential for our survival and biological demands. Secondary needs, which fall into five categories – ambition, materialism, power, affection, and information – are crucial for our psychological well-being.

Self-Determination Theory

According to this theory, there are three core needs that drive our desires: autonomy (the need for control), competence (the need for achievement), and relatedness (the need for meaningful relationships).

How People Judge the Value of Products and Services

Kaufman states that people’s needs vary based on their circumstances, and they only show interest in offers that address their discomfort. For instance, a recently divorced person may be more receptive to romantic connection services than a happily married person.

When assessing the value of an offer, people consider both objective factors like reliability and cost-effectiveness and subjective factors like how it makes them feel and how it affects their image.

Businesses Align Offers With What People Want

Kaufman suggests eight ways for businesses to meet the five basic needs that drive purchasing decisions: create or buy products, offer services for a fee, create an asset and charge for access, supply products and services through subscriptions, rent out physical property, provide brokerage services for a commission, create and monetize attention, and lend money or offer insurance.

How You Sell Depends on What You’re Selling and Who You’re Selling To

Osterwalder and Pigneur’s (Business Model Generation) provide five different markets that business ideas fit into, each requiring a specific marketing and sales approach. These markets are not fixed, and it depends on the nature of the product or service and the target audience. Once you have determined the best approach for your business, consider which market suits your offer the best. The five markets are as follows:

  1. Mass Market: Selling to a large customer base with similar needs.
  2. Niche Market: Selling to a small customer base with unique requirements.
  3. Subdivided Market: Offering slightly different products and services to meet different customer needs.
  4. Diversified Market: Offering distinctly different products and services to unrelated customer groups.
  5. Multi-Sided Market: Serving interdependent customer groups, with an approach that appeals equally to both parties.

Evaluate Potential Products and Services Before Investing in Them

Kaufman advises businesses to test the viability of products and services before investing in them. To do this, ask yourself five questions:

Question #1: How Much Will It Take to Get It Out There?

Assess the time and financial commitment needed for developing, marketing, and distributing your product or service. Determine required resources and anticipate fixed and variable costs, including research and development, rent, salaries, supplies, and utilities.

Question #2: How Will You Finance It?

Consider the need for funding and the associated risks. If you plan to borrow money or seek investors, weigh the advantages and disadvantages carefully.

Loans are easy to apply for, have tax-deductible interest payments, and improve your credit score with repayments. However, they require personal assets as collateral, have to be repaid with interest even if your business fails, and can result in higher interest rates with multiple loans.

Question #3: How Much Demand Is There?

To determine market demand for your product or service, try these strategies:

  1. Analyze how many people are searching for similar products using SEO tools.
  2. Refer to public reviews and social listening tools to understand how people value existing products.
  3. Research competitors’ pricing for similar offers.
  4. Also, keep in mind that demand can fluctuate based on availability, seasonal trends, and economic/natural events.

Question #4: How Much Competition Is There?

Assess your product’s competition and strive to differentiate your offer to stand out from others and win customer loyalty in a crowded market.

How to Analyze the Competition

Experts advise entrepreneurs to identify their competitors’ strengths and weaknesses in four ways:

  1. Attend professional conferences and trade shows to observe competitors’ offerings and customer interactions.
  2. Analyze competitors’ website and SEO strategies using online tools to examine keywords, site traffic, and ranking.
  3. Examine competitors’ social media presence to learn about their platforms, content, followers, and customer responsiveness.
  4. Sign up for competitors’ newsletters to gain insights into their email marketing strategies.

Use this information to improve your product or service until it matches or exceeds what’s currently available. For instance, if you discover that your competitors are slow to respond to customer concerns on social media, develop a plan to enhance your social media strategy and provide better customer service.

Question #5: How Much Potential Is There to Expand Your Offer?

Think about how you can expand your offer to increase future sales and profits. Can you modify your offer or offer complementary products to meet additional needs?

Overestimate the Risks of Proceeding With Your Idea

Kaufman advises that when you’re passionate about your product or service, it’s easy to overlook potential obstacles and underestimate risks. To avoid this, intentionally seek out reasons why your idea may not work to make more accurate plans and increase your chances of success.

Part #2: Entice Attention

The second step in a business’s journey is to attract potential customers by tailoring its marketing approach. It’s crucial to appeal to people who’ve already shown interest in the offer. This section of the guide will cover how to make your offer more appealing.

Identify People Who Might Be Interested in Your Offer

Kaufman suggests that people are busy and make quick decisions about what’s worth their time. To get noticed, successful businesses target those who’ve expressed an interest in similar offers and focus on converting them into paying customers. It’s a waste of resources to advertise to those who have no interest in what they offer. For instance, promoting a vegan recipe book to someone who bought a book on offal won’t work, but promoting it to someone who bought a raw food recipe book would.

Persuade Them to Want What You’re Offering

To make your offer attractive to potential customers, Kaufman suggests four tips.

  1. Keep your message concise and to the point.
  2. Identify when your target audience is most receptive to your content.
  3. Demonstrate the benefits of your offer to evoke positive emotions and a fear of missing out.
  4. Use endorsements from respected individuals to establish trust.

Part #3: Encourage Transactions

The third important process for businesses is to secure sales and make a profit. In this section, we’ll cover tactics used to encourage sales and strategies for determining prices.

Customers Feel No Sense of Urgency to Hand Over Their Money

To ensure successful transactions, businesses need to act fast once they have potential customers’ attention.

However, customers tend to take their time in making a purchase decision, which is why businesses should use limitations and money-back guarantees to encourage them. Limitations, such as limited availability or an expiration date for discounts, create a sense of urgency, while money-back guarantees build trust and alleviate doubts.

How to Price Your Offer

To balance fair pricing with profit, Kaufman recommends four strategies:

  1. Manufacturing cost + profit: Calculate the cost of production and add desired profit per sale.
  2. Comparative pricing: Set prices based on the average of similar offers. Lower prices attract more customers, but higher prices signal superiority.
  3. Long-term value: If selling an asset that generates ongoing income, set the price based on its projected earnings over time.
  4. Subjective value: Determine how much your offer is worth to specific customers based on their needs and set prices accordingly.

How to Increase Profits Without Raising Your Prices

To boost sales revenue, businesses often resort to raising prices. However, there are three other ways to achieve this, as suggested by Kaufman:

  1. Increase the number of customers making a single purchase.
  2. Encourage customers to spend more by purchasing additional products or services.
  3. Encourage existing customers to make more frequent purchases.

Part #4: Fulfill Expectations

Businesses need to prioritize customer satisfaction to ensure success. This involves optimizing resources and procedures to meet customer needs.

Satisfied Customers Are the Key to Long-Term Success

Kaufman believes that satisfying customer expectations after a sale is as important as attracting new customers for business success. Satisfied customers provide long-term revenue and positive reviews, while disappointed customers lead to lost revenue, negative reviews, and damage to reputation. This repels potential customers and requires additional expenses to repair the damage, hindering business success.

Optimize Systems and Procedures to Ensure Satisfaction

Kaufman advises businesses to prioritize efficient and reliable operations for customer satisfaction and success. To achieve this, businesses must understand all tasks involved in their product or service and make incremental improvements through streamlining, cost-cutting, and resource improvement.

Prioritize Improvements That Will Make the Most Impact

Kaufman advises prioritizing impactful improvements for efficient and profitable business operations. Consider the impact and possible consequences of changes on your operations before proceeding. Separating your list of improvements into priority and non-priority items can help you allocate resources effectively.

Book Summary of Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene M. Schwartz

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Copywriting expert Eugene M. Schwartz, in his bestseller Breakthrough Advertising, emphasizes the critical role of headlines and copy in creating persuasive ads that drive sales. A compelling headline grabs the reader’s attention, while strong copy amplifies the message and motivates the customer to make a purchase.

In this guide, Schwartz’s proven techniques for creating powerful headlines and copy are presented in two parts.

Part #1 outlines how to use market research to craft attention-grabbing headlines that entice customers to read on.

Part #2 delves into Schwartz’s strategies for writing persuasive copy that drives demand for your product.

Part #1: Write a Captivating Headline

The first part of this guide outlines the purpose of impactful headlines: to grab attention, connect with customers, and set the stage for your copy. We’ll also cover three crucial areas of customer research that enable you to identify their key needs, tap into their level of awareness, and differentiate your product from competitors.

Headlines Serve Three Purposes

Schwartz emphasizes that the headline is the foremost and vital element of an advertisement. Its three functions are:

1) To grab attention by making a dramatic statement or sparking curiosity, such as “Lose $1,000 a year by not reading this” or “The secret to saving money on fuel that fuel companies don’t want you to know.”

2) To resonate with customers’ desires and promise to fulfill a specific need, as customers rely on headlines to determine if the ad’s copy is relevant to them. The headline ” Get your gas filled for half price” would appeal to drivers who are budget-conscious, but not to those who don’t drive.

3) It sets the expectation for the rest of the copy. For instance, using the “half-price gas” headline, readers can anticipate the copy to cover the drawbacks of expensive gas and present a solution to obtain a cheaper deal.

Schwartz believes that to craft a headline that grabs attention, resonates with customers, and sets expectations for the copy, you need to research three customer aspects:

  • Their desires
  • Their awareness of your product
  • Their awareness of your competitors’ products
  • Now, let’s delve into each of these areas of research.

Research Area #1: What Customers Want

To craft an attention-grabbing headline, you need to grasp customers’ desires. Schwartz asserts that it’s impractical to make customers want something, so instead, you should discern their existing wants and present your product as the sole solution to satisfy their needs.

Schwartz suggests a two-step approach to position your product effectively:

  • Evaluate your product.
  • Connect your product with the primary customer need.
  • Now, let’s examine each of these steps closely.

Step #1: Analyze Your Product

Schwartz suggests that comprehending your product can facilitate creating positive connections between customer desires and what your product provides. He advises noting the materials used, technical specifications, aesthetic details, and possible uses of the product.

For instance, if you have a dating app to market, you can assess its features like profile viewing, chat function, membership size, ad-free interface, and subscription fees. Additionally, you can consider how members might use the app to develop both romantic and friendly relationships.

Step #2: Align Your Product With the Predominant Customer Need

To connect your product to specific customer needs, group each item on your list and consider two categories of needs: primal needs (such as feeling loved) and shifting needs (such as expecting an ad-free interface). Then, choose the customer need that applies to the largest potential market and target it in your headline.

Research Area #2: Customer Awareness of Your Product

To craft an effective headline, you must determine the level of awareness your customers have about your product.

Schwartz identifies five levels of awareness and recommends tailoring your headline to the level your customers are at. Here’s how to create headlines for each level of awareness.

Awareness #1: Customers Don’t Feel Like They Need Your Product

Level one of product awareness represents customers who are unaware of or indifferent to the need that your product fulfills. Schwartz advises creating a headline that resonates with an emotion or attitude they can identify with and then using your copy to educate them on why they need your product.

For instance, for a dating app, you could use the headline “Do you miss being in love?”

Awareness #2: Customers Feel a Need-But Don’t Know How to Fulfill It

Level two of product awareness includes customers who recognize the need for a product that fulfills their specific need but aren’t aware of any solutions yet. Schwartz recommends that the headline clearly defines the need, conveys a sense of urgency, and presents your product as the inevitable solution. For instance, “Feeling alone and unwanted? Our app can solve that for you!”

Awareness #3: Customers Know How They Want to Fulfill the Need Your Product Satisfies

For customers who know what they want but not that your product can help, Schwartz advises a headline with three components: defining the need, demonstrating its possibility, and illustrating how your product fulfills it. For example, “Find all the good dates with [app name] – fulfilling your dating needs.”

Awareness #4: Customers Aren’t Sure About Your Product

Schwartz recommends targeting customers at the fourth awareness level by focusing on one of five objectives in your headline: reinforcing their need for your product, emphasizing the benefits of your product, proving your product’s effectiveness, clarifying how your product works, or addressing common objections.

For example, “Don’t settle for mediocre dates” reinforces the need for a better dating experience.

For customers who are unsure if your product can meet their needs, Schwartz recommends five approaches for crafting an effective headline: reinforcing their need for your product, emphasizing the benefits of your product, proving your product’s effectiveness, clarifying how your product works, and addressing concerns.

For customers who are already aware of your product and just need a push to make a purchase, Schwartz suggests incentivizing them with a discount or promotion in your headline.

Research Area #3: Customer Awareness of Your Competitors’ Products

After identifying customer needs and product awareness, evaluate their knowledge of competing products to gauge how to differentiate your product. According to Schwartz, two types of customers require different strategies for product differentiation:

  • Those who are unaware of competing products
  • Those who are aware of competing products.

Customer Group #1: Unaware of Competitive Products

Schwartz advises that if customers are unaware of similar products, your headline should be simple and direct. For instance, “Effortlessly find love!”

Customer Group #2: Aware of Competitive Products

Schwartz advises that if customers are unaware of similar products, use a simple and direct headline such as “Effortlessly find love!” If customers are aware of a few competitors, expand on their headline and explain why your product is better.

For example, “The fastest and easiest way to find love.” For customers aware of many options, your headline should either emphasize a new benefit, like “Guaranteed perfect match in under 60 seconds!” or appeal to emotions, like “For those who know life should be better.”

Part #2: Write Persuasive Copy

To create an effective advertisement, Schwartz suggests four strategies for writing copy that reinforces the message in your headline.

Copy Strategy #1: Evoke Customers’ Aspirations

Schwartz advises targeting customers’ aspirations by highlighting how they are missing something and showing how your product can help them become their ideal self. This creates dissatisfaction and primes customers to seek a solution. For example, phrases like “Tired of being single?” and “Make your friends jealous with our app!” can be effective.

Copy Strategy #2: Explain Exactly How Your Product Fulfills Their Need

Schwartz advises explaining how product features fulfill customer needs by referencing product analysis such as materials used, technical specs, and aesthetic details. Use these features to showcase how your product effortlessly fulfills customer needs, such as “Our unique algorithm ensures that every match is compatible.”

Copy Strategy #3: Use Endorsements to Prove Your Product’s Effectiveness

Schwartz advises including expert recommendations, customer testimonials, or celebrity endorsements to serve as social proof that your product can fulfill customers’ needs. For instance, “Our app helped [Celebrity] find true love!”

Copy Strategy #4: Emphasize Your Product’s Superiority

Schwartz advises highlighting competitors’ weaknesses and promoting your product’s superiority to establish it as the top choice. This works well because informed customers require assistance in distinguishing between similar products. By emphasizing your product’s advantages over competitors, customers can judge it as the best option. For instance, “We ensure user profiles are accurate, unlike other apps, so you always know who you’re meeting.”

Book Summary of Business Made Simple by Donald Miller

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Donald Miller believes that the reason you may not be making enough progress in your business career is that you’re not adding enough value to your company. Miller suggests 11 methods to become a good investment for your company, from acquiring value-adding personal attributes to successfully carrying out a strategy.

By following his advice, you can learn how to add value to your company no matter what your role. Creating a StoryBrand is a book by Miller, the owner of StoryBrand, a firm that assists businesses with story-based marketing message.

In this manual, we’ll add psychological knowledge and advise from other business experts to Miller’s suggestions.

Your Goal in Business: To Be a Good Investment for Your Company

Adding value to a company by generating profits is key to succeeding in business, according to Miller. This ability can lead to career advancement or entrepreneurial success, as leaders and investors prioritize it. For example, creating a successful marketing campaign that brings in new prospects and revenue is more likely to get you noticed and promoted compared to simply fulfilling job requirements.

11 Ways to Investing Well for Your Business

Miller provides 11 sequential steps to become a valuable investment for your company.

Trait 1:

Successful professionals recognize themselves as valuable economic assets to their companies, quantifying and explaining their value in terms of revenue generated or sales made. They aim to earn back at least five times their salary, resulting in a modest profit for the company.

Trait 2:

To succeed and be a valuable asset to your company, you must see yourself as an active agent in your life. Making excuses and playing the victim will hinder your growth and success. By pursuing new goals actively, you can learn and develop.

Trait 3:

Reacting calmly to problems is a valuable trait that can earn you respect and help you accomplish more. By handling problems gracefully, you can conserve mental energy for yourself and others.

Trait 4:

Being open to feedback is a key trait for success. Seeking regular feedback from mentors and friends can help you improve and excel, even if it’s initially challenging to hear.

Trait 5:

Successfully managing conflict is crucial for progress. To navigate conflict productively, Miller recommends accepting it as a part of moving forward, avoiding intense negative emotions, showing respect for the person involved, and prioritizing resolution over being right.

Trait 6:

As a manager, prioritizing respect over being liked is crucial for the success of your team and company. You can earn trust by setting clear goals, clarifying individual responsibilities, and rewarding achievements.

Trait 7:

Being action-oriented is key to completing projects. Merely intending or planning to do something isn’t enough; you must follow through with action.

Trait 8:

Trusting in your knowledge and taking action leads to faster progress than procrastinating or avoiding difficult decisions.

Trait 9:

Maintaining a positive outlook on the outcome of your actions leads to taking more risks, resulting in greater long-term rewards.

Trait 10:

Believing in your ability to improve means failures are viewed as growth opportunities. You can take on greater challenges and rise to meet them, leading to growth, improved skills, more responsibility, and higher pay.

Step 2: Become an Effective Leader by Creating a Company Story

Miller’s second step for becoming a valuable asset involves creating a company story to become a successful leader. A company story explains the reason for the company’s existence and why people should engage with it.

Without a clear story or mission that includes every employee, the company will lack direction and fail. To create a company story, start by writing a mission statement that inspires action, using a template such as “We will accomplish [goal] by [date/year] because of [why achieving the goal is important].”

Then, define the traits employees must possess to fulfill the mission and determine three repeatable actions they should take daily to achieve it.

Step 3: Enhance Productivity by Focusing Only on Critical Tasks

Miller’s third step towards becoming a valuable company investment is to manage time effectively by prioritizing tasks that offer the highest return on energy investment. Miller recommends creating two task lists: one with three crucial tasks to complete each day and another with less important tasks to delegate or eliminate. It’s important to complete the top three tasks first, even if only partially done, to increase productivity.

Step 4: Visualize Your Business as an Aircraft to Become an Experienced Marketer

Step four in Miller’s guide to becoming a valuable employee involves learning to strategize effectively. He suggests visualizing the company as an airplane with five parts – body (overhead), wings (products/services), right engine (marketing), left engine (sales), and fuel (capital and cash flow). Balancing these divisions is essential for maximizing success.

For instance, if the body of the plane becomes heavier, the marketing and sales engines must be powerful enough to keep it aloft. Miller advises keeping overhead low, ensuring profitable and popular products, testing marketing with a website, building a sales funnel, and monitoring cash flow to stay airborne.

Step 5: Base Your Messaging on a Story the Customer Can Star In

Step 5 in adding value to your organization is crafting effective marketing messaging. Miller recommends creating a story where the customer is the hero with a goal that your product helps them achieve. The hero faces an obstacle, which is the problem your product solves. You position yourself as the guide who can help the hero overcome the obstacle with a plan and challenge the hero to take action. Lastly, you explain the benefits the hero gains by taking action and the consequences of not taking action.

Step 6: Create A Three-Step Sales Funnel That Fosters Customer Trust in The Sixth Step.

To become a valuable team member, it’s important to learn marketing mechanics. Miller emphasizes the significance of a robust sales funnel in marketing strategy.

A sales funnel helps to improve sales by leading buyers through the three stages of inquiry, comprehension, and purchase. To spark curiosity in potential customers, create a concise sentence that outlines a problem, your product as the solution, and the result of using your product to solve the problem.

Step 7: Communicate in a Story Format so Others Listen

To add value to your company, you must excel in basic communication, particularly presentations, according to Miller. In sales presentations, follow the story structure and focus on the problem you’ll solve, your solution, and how it will change the customer’s life.

Connect every subpoint to your main point, and limit the number of subpoints to three or four. For a unique and memorable presentation, consider weaving in other stories and keeping it short. Gallo suggests a maximum of 18 minutes, as anything longer will cause the audience to tune out, regardless of the presentation’s quality.

Step 8: Making the Sale Involving Qualifying Leads, Sharing A Narrative, And Sending Proposals

To add value through sales, Miller recommends qualifying leads to avoid wasting time and money. Ask if they have a problem your product solves, if it’s within their budget, and if they have the authority to buy.

Miller also suggests pitching in a story format, highlighting the customer’s problem and proposing a solution with references to past success. Lastly, provide a document or video summarizing your pitch for prospects to reference.

Step 9: Negotiate Effectively by Determining the Other Party’s Negotiating Style

Step 9 is about developing negotiation skills to add value to your company. According to Miller, there are two types of negotiation: cooperative and adversarial. In a cooperative negotiation, both parties aim for a win-win outcome, while in an adversarial negotiation, one or both parties want to win at the other’s expense.

To negotiate successfully, identify the type of negotiation and adjust your approach accordingly. Find out what factors influence the other party’s decision-making process and appeal to their emotional needs. For instance, when selling a used car, highlight its sleek leather interior to appeal to the buyer’s desire for a stylish ride. Finally, to end a negotiation, pretend to be dissatisfied with the outcome, which signals to the other party that they’ve won.

Step 10: Successfully Manage Groups With Metrics

To effectively manage people, Miller advises relying on input and output metrics. Input metrics measure the work put in to produce an output, while output metrics measure the actual output produced. For example, posting three times a week on social media (input) could lead to 300 new followers (output).

Step 11: Execute Well Using a Plan

To execute a project successfully, Miller recommends three steps: hold a launch meeting to determine the project’s success criteria, participants, resources, and timeline; check in with the team weekly to ensure everyone knows their next step; and publicly track input metrics to encourage the team’s progress.

In “A World Without Email,” Cal Newport suggests using task boards to manage communication and check-ins effectively. Task boards are physical or digital boards with columns representing project stages and cards representing tasks. Newport also advises delegating the scheduling of large meetings to an administrator or scheduling service.

Book Summary of the 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries

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Successful companies don’t solely rely on high-quality products and large marketing budgets. In their book published in 1993, marketing experts Al Ries and Jack Trout identified 22 laws that determine marketing success. The authors studied well-known and lesser-known brands for over 25 years to discover the strategies that lead to success and failure. These common principles have been condensed into the 22 immutable laws of marketing.

Convince Consumers That You’re the Only Viable Option

The initial four laws of marketing aim to make your brand the preferred choice in your market. Within every significant product category, there’s a single brand that consumers immediately associate with it, such as Hershey’s for chocolate or Scotch tape for cellophane tape. The most successful brands are the ones that are perceived as the defaults in their respective categories. Follow these laws to ensure that your product is the top choice among consumers.

Law #1 of marketing stresses the importance of being the first in your field, as first entrants are more successful and tend to remain market leaders over time.

Law #2 suggests creating a new category if you can’t be the first in your field, like Charles Schwab did by launching the first discount brokerage firm.

Law #3 emphasizes being the first brand in consumers’ minds, as this is crucial for success.

Law #4 states that perception is more important than fact in marketing. Consumers’ perception of your product is your most potent weapon, so it’s essential to build your marketing plan around how people form perceptions, using laws like #8 and #15. Marketing can manipulate people’s perceptions and realities.

Focus Your Message

The second set of marketing laws emphasizes the need to have a clear and unique marketing message that sets you apart from your competitors. By targeting a specific audience and focusing on a concise message, you can get the most traction in your marketing efforts. Use these laws to define your product in a way that is appealing to customers.

Law #5: Define Your Brand with One Word. Choose a simple, specific, and loaded word that sets you apart from competitors and implies desirable qualities. For example, Mercedes used ‘engineering’ to showcase innovations.

Law #6: Avoid competitors’ words. Using a word already associated with a competitor undermines creating a unique association between the word and your brand.

Law #7: Select the most valued attribute for your product, such as fighting cavities in toothpaste. If your competitor already claimed it, choose the next-best opposite attribute, like “whitening” or “fresh breath.” Avoid similar attributes to prevent being overshadowed.

Leverage Your Market Position

The following marketing laws explain how markets behave and how you can use this knowledge to improve your marketing strategy. Understanding your position in the market is key to crafting a successful message to consumers. These laws provide insights on how to leverage your market position for more effective marketing.

Law #8: Acknowledge your position in the market and use it to inform your advertising. Be honest with consumers about where you stand in the hierarchy of brands. Avis succeeded when it changed its campaign to say, “We’re No. 2, but we try harder.” This approach gave consumers a reason to choose Avis over the market leader.

Law #9: Over time, every market becomes a two-company race, with competitors fighting for the top two spots. It’s crucial to secure and maintain one of these spots to succeed.

Law #10: If you can’t be the market leader, embody the opposite of what they do best. Consumers are naturally drawn to the most popular brand or repelled by it. Stake your claim on the market share that wants something different by highlighting how your product is unique and better. For example, while Coca-Cola dominated the established cola market, Pepsi positioned itself as the fresh alternative for younger consumers.

Be Consistent

Consistency in product offerings is crucial for consumer trust. By focusing on positioning your product as the best and building a marketing campaign around it, customers will know what to expect from your brand. Changing your strategy or offerings will only confuse your customers and lead them to look for more familiar alternatives. Use the following laws to maintain consistency.

Law #11: As markets evolve, they tend to split into more specific categories. If a market leader wants to enter one of these new categories, they should use a new brand name to avoid confusing customers who associate the existing brand name with a specific attribute.

Law #12: Marketers must resist the temptation of short-term benefits and consider the long-term effects of their actions. For example, Miller High Life’s sales grew until they introduced Miller Lite. Although sales of Miller Lite tripled, sales of Miller High Life fell for 13 years, dropping below pre-Lite levels.

Law #13: Don’t launch new products in different categories under the same brand name. This can confuse customers and weaken your brand strength. For example, 7-Up’s market share more than halved when it introduced new flavors and diet versions of the drink.

Law #14: Running a successful marketing campaign requires discipline and sacrifice, as demonstrated by these laws.

To maintain a narrow, targeted focus, it’s essential to sacrifice certain products, messages, and ideas in three areas: product line, target market, and constant change.

Offering more products and services dilutes customers’ association with your brand. Targeted messages are more successful in expanding your customer base, and constantly changing your marketing strategy weakens your brand association. Stick to a strategy that has been serving you well for success.

Be Strategic About Your Overall Marketing Plan

Be strategic with your marketing plan by considering the big picture and your overarching tone and approach. Use these laws as a guide.

Law #15: Acknowledge negatives and turn them into positives. Denying them damages credibility. For example, Listerine embraced its awful taste with “The taste you hate twice a day,” implying it’s a powerful germ killer.

Law #16: Focus on bold moves and capitalize on weak spots of competitors. Top managers should be involved in marketing and ready to seize opportunities.

Law #17: Competitors can introduce unexpected changes, making it difficult to predict the future. Create a short-term plan focused on a unique word or concept, and pair it with a long-term direction that builds upon it to guide future plans. This reduces the risk of disruption from unpredictability.

Get on Top and Stay There

The final laws offer general business advice.

Law #18 emphasizes the importance of funding in successful marketing, even for established companies.

Law #19 advises embracing failure as an inevitable part of the journey to success.

Law #20 warns against believing hype, as media attention may not necessarily indicate a company’s success.

Finally, Law #21 urges businesses to follow trends rather than fads, as trends lead to long-term success while fads can be short-lived and harmful.

Law #22: Beware of Success

Success can lead to downfall in several ways:

  1. It inflates egos and can lead to decisions that harm the company.
  2. Growth creates demands on executives’ time, making it harder to stay involved in marketing decisions.
  3. As CEOs become more distant from the front lines, they may lose touch with important issues and challenges.