TABLE OF CONTENTS

WHY READ THIS BOOK?

PROLOGUE (Rant)
CRUCIAL DEFINITIONS
INFORMATION
NETWORK
VALUE
EXPERIENCE
STRATEGY
TECHNOLOGY
CONCLUSION
IMPLEMENTATION
CARL HOLDEN

To begin implementing The INVEST Method today, check out the free
downloads at
www.theINVESTmethod.com/resources
WHY READ THIS BOOK?
In a post-internet world, the basic principles being taught about marketing
are wildly inadequate or simply based on the latest trend. Whether you are
a CMO, marketing professional, sales person, or entrepreneur, you must
truly understand marketing to achieve the greatest success.
The INVEST Method will change your perception of marketing. I’ve had
colleagues and clients say, “That makes total sense.” Its principles have
helped many people better understand how marketing works. People with
whom I have shared this moment often say they feel more prepared to
make important marketing decisions.
Do you want to feel like your marketing is less guess and more
confidence? This method gives a framework to check your ideas, model
plans, and execute a more positive effort– not just for the marketing
department but the company as a whole.
As you internalize the principles ahead, your marketing will become more
logical and thorough. Or you can stop reading here and keep guessing
about why marketing works at all.
These models and principles are key to understanding modern marketing.
Read them openly and thoughtfully. This method has the potential to give
you a clarity about marketing you’ve not had before. On your first read-
through, try to read this book in a day or two so that you can see the big
picture. There’s a marketing “a-ha” moment in your future.
PROLOGUE (Rant)
This is not the “next big thing” or a quick “reach-a-million-followers”
scheme. That’s not the purpose of this book. The point of this book is to
instill a more solid, logical foundation of marketing to develop greater
skills and more profitable profession.
The marketing industry is sick, filled with a cancerous slew of
catchphrases, quick solutions, jargon, “Social Media is the New
Marketing” and solve-all-your-problems software. There’s quality content
out there, but for every good piece of content, there are a dozen bad ones.
Not only that, but marketing relies so heavily on trends, expert opinions,
and dumb luck that it feels like most decisions are either backed by
assumptions on big data or lucky educated guesses. Some marketers rely
just on social media or influencers, claiming that is the best way. Others
rely on data and the latest studies to make their decisions. Few people have
a marketing method to ensure consistent success that uses all the elements
of marketing. Let’s face it. Marketing is the red-headed stepchild of most
organizations, except in marketing or software companies. Most marketing
departments could technically fit in a broom closet, and many
organizations assign marketing employees with non-marketing tasks. It’s
usually the first to get cut when times get hard.
What if a company said to cut the wings when their plane is too heavy to
fly? But how could you prevent that cutting when you can’t explain fluid
dynamics? The same applies to marketing– it gets cut because it remains
misunderstood.

Marketing should exist in all departments.

Marketing should be how a company shows why its offering matters and
why it is meaningful and exciting. It needs to be a method and process that
involves the entire company rather than staying in one department.
With these misconceptions, marketing has been neglected not just in
business but in education. Students are still being taught the antiquated
marketing mix of four P’s- Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. Though
these are sometimes involved in marketing, they describe only parts and
not founding principles.
A quick Google search will reveal that the “Marketing Mix” came out
around 1960. THAT WAS ALMOST 60 YEARS AGO. No offense to
Jerome McCarthy, but that dude wasn’t Einstein. His principles just don’t
apply today.
Marketing mix gets searched hundreds of thousands of times per month.
Bright, young marketing minds read a status quo that really hasn’t been
updated since their parents were in diapers.
Yes, there have been more P’s added since then. Marketers are always
talking about trying something new, but then we just add more P’s to an
already inferior list.

Marketers need principles, not party tricks.

It seems like most other professional disciplines have a more definite base.
Math is concrete. Science, though changing, has laws. What does
marketing have? A set of P’s propagated by its catchy consonance that
doesn’t help at all to understand what it takes to do modern marketing!
Is marketing too complicated or has our field simply not taken the time to
flesh out more logical and comprehensive principles?
There are better principles that define our work. Aren’t you tired of all the
P-ing we do in this profession? Marketing deserves better.
Part of the problem with marketing is not our fault. Many local businesses
get along without intentionally doing marketing as a planned activity.
When approached to do so, they see it as an expense instead of what it is–
an investment!
The previous sentence was intentional, not coincidental. The new modern
marketing mix is INVEST. Every letter is a crucial principle of marketing
and each should be an investment of thought, time, and deliberate actions.
Instead of pitching why there’s an average “Some Number % ROI” on
marketing, it should be emphasized that effective marketing is an
investment.
CRUCIAL DEFINITIONS
It’s surprising how hard it is for people to define Marketing. Most
nonmarketing people will say, “Advertising.” Anyone who has a career in
the industry winces when they hear that.
I’ve even seen students with marketing majors struggle to define their own
degree. Why study what you can’t define?
Why such problems defining it? Marketing lacks concrete, concise
definitions. Definitions should never be longer than what is utterly
necessary. Otherwise, it makes them too hard to remember.
The American Marketing Association defines marketing as “the activity,
set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering,
and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners,
and society at large. ”

That’s a formidable definition, even if you have a great memory. If you

stopped reading right here, could you effectively repeat that definition
without rereading? The most effective, memorable definition is a single,
short sentence.

Marketing is converting a consumer into a

customer.
That is the purpose, not a long list of particulars. It’s easy to remember, yet
invokes thought. Now, let’s break down its three major terms to make what
it said very clear.
“Convert” is a strong word; it bears a lasting conviction. It signifies an
inner change as well as an outer. This conversion has an effect on their
mental and emotional state as well as their fiscal and physical state. It
could have read “turning,” but one can choose to turn right back.
Conversion is the kind of devotion that companies should be looking for.
Consumers are anyone who could convert, anyone that can recognize an
opportunity and choose your offering. They have the potential of exchange
but have not yet executed the decision.
A customer is someone who utilizes an offering, usually after some form
of exchange. As long as they engage, that is their identity, even after they
convert. Until they dispose of the offering and consciously repeal their
conversion, this is their identity.
You can’t buy a customer, at least not a loyal one. You INVEST in the
development of a customer.

Marketing is converting a consumer into a

customer.
As you read, you will find that orange represents conversion. The entire
goal of marketing is this conversion so the following models of INVEST
will be color-coded to highlight this important event.
By the way, the word “offering” is used instead of writing “product” and/or
“service.” The line between product and service is often too blurry to use
one or the other and adequately describe the offering.
The most important aspect of effective learning is understanding. However,
if you want particulars and case studies on certain scenarios, read a
different book.
Does reading about Michael Phelps make you a better swimmer? Than
why would reading the stories about the bumble of New Coke or the
success of Apple make you a better marketer? Case studies alone build on
a foundation of biased assumptions.
Rather, it’s more about understanding a path than following in footsteps.
This book’s purpose is to gain a grasp on the overarching principles of
INVEST that have application in marketing for any business.
Content is no longer the king but the entire
kingdom.
Many marketing companies claim that success is found in producing
quality branded content. It’s not wrong. If anything, it’s being abused.
There’s too many blog posts, ebooks, and other digital content out there,
and information alone is not enough. It needs to be valuable. There is
much to be said of branding, personality, social strategy, copywriting, etc.
Actually, there’s too much being said of these things. That’s the problem.
The internet has plenty of content out there about these topics, and some of
it is vitally important to know. What you will find in this book is important
but completely different.
Others might claim that the cure to our marketing ills is found in big data.
Yet, that’s not stopped even huge companies from making massive
mistakes. As successful as it has been, Google has ideas that falter or even
fail. Often, their successes weren’t based on statistics but an idea, intuition,
and inspiration! Innovation comes by the collected investment of time and
mind.
Most people do not sit and think, claiming there’s no time. Our society
does not value thought like it used to. Some of the world's greatest
thinkers... thought! They contemplated and meditated, breaking mysteries
with ingenuity and logic.
It’s too bad our society can’t revert back to a culture that greatly valued
logic and encouraged thought as a regular activity. As you read the quotes
included in this book, ponder on their meaning for you and your
profession.
Highly applicable to this book and others like it, Socrates once said,
"Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings, so that
you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for."

The INVEST Method is Information, Network,

Value, Experience, Strategy, and Technology.
The models below are the main subject of this book and will be covered in
the following six chapters.

Each of the models will be explained in detail to relate how each of the six
elements contribute to marketing. We are in dire need of a new marketing
mix as the world has left our old ideas behind.
It’s obvious that the advent of consumer electronics has changed the way
we live. To believe that the same marketing tactics of yesteryear will work
today is naïve.
Product. Price. Promotion. Place. They are merely nouns in the novel of
marketing. INVEST is an action word, a verb. These two share some
similar elements, but INVEST elaborates in greater detail what to
accomplish. The four P’s should stand for perfectly pitiful, paltry
principles.
INVEST is a modern way of thinking, not just a clever acronym.
Marketing takes time and patience to be truly effective. If you treat it as an
expense, you get what you pay for– a bill and buyer’s remorse.
Something must change. We can’t keep using inadequate principles from
the 60s. Sweet mother of marketing, let’s do something other than P!

To begin implementing The INVEST Method today,

check out the free downloads at
www.theINVESTmethod.com/resources
 INFORMATION
“To know that we know what we know, and to
know that we do not know what we do not know, that
is true knowledge.”
-Copernicus
Read that quote again if you didn’t quite get it. It’s an important principle
that everyone should understand clearly.
This is the Information Age. Never has knowledge been so readily
available to mankind. There is so little effort left to discerning a fact. It
only takes a few button presses, and a process that could take hours in a
library happens in milliseconds.
The business world is slowly adapting to this change, and not all
companies have done it wisely. Many ignorantly assume that our current
state is a “passing fad” and that their older methods will prevail.

All businesses are educators.

When people consider an offering, they know that they know certain
things. Likewise, they know that they do not know certain things.
Marketing involves organizing and distributing the flow of Information.
Every business communicates information; the key is to do it with a
purpose and strategy.

Information is a collection of individual facts and

data about an offering.

Some data is useful and some is not. The art of appropriately organizing
information is what all marketers should seek to learn. What information
must you communicate to convince a consumer to convert? That’s the holy
grail of marketing!
The facts and data about most businesses are everywhere they exist and
touch. Stats about their products, staff, and processes reside in many
departments. The difficulty begins when trying to decide how to
communicate all of this to the outside world.
A great deal of Information is communicated visually, which is why there
are models for each of the letters of INVEST. Again, these are not models
based on some big data algorithm but are formed by what the world needs
more of– basic common sense and logic.
An important concept of INVEST is to embrace the fact that marketing is
quite complicated. Embrace the chaos, yet approach it with logic and
mindfulness. Chaos is what created the atom because deep below the
madness of physics are patterns that work behind the scenes.
No one model can show what works every time in every business. Every
model of INVEST attempts to show underlying reasons behind why
marketing works. This first model will show the importance of organized
data in relation to it being communicated to a consumer and how this
process relates to aiding conversion.
Consider INVEST the bones around which to build the body of your
marketing efforts and a system of diagnostics to make sure you stay
healthy and productive.
A chart helps us understand that as information is communicated, other
factors of conversion are reacting to this delineation of information.
People buy according to the Information they
have and don’t have.
That may seem obvious. However, rarely do businesses stop to evaluate,
“What does the consumer know about us?” The question is usually, “What
should we say next?”
People learn in a linear fashion, fact by fact. Embracing that you are
feeding them dots like Pacman simplifies what marketing is. We are simply
leading people in a journey of mental discovery.

The x-axis is the time spent on investigation.

The horizontal axis is the time when a consumer makes a concerted effort to
investigate a type of offering and its competitors, from the day of initial
interest to the eventual abandonment of curiosity.
It varies depending on what type of offering and person are involved. With
the internet, people hear or read about offerings their whole lives. Toilet
paper is a few minutes. A house is a few months. The goal is to the reach
the peak of interest, not the end.

The blue dotted line is Information.

Its upward slope represents the delineation of information about an
offering to a consumer. Usually, simpler Information should be shared first,
and more Information only gets more complicated. That’s the way it should
be, not how it is necessarily in the real world. The increase of Information
is what helps pull up AND push down the orange conversion likelihood
line. As more is learned, the consumer gets closer to conversion. If too
much is being forced on her, she will lose attention and conversion
likelihood will decrease.

The orange bell curve corresponds with the

relative likelihood to buy.
The upward and downward curves have many reasons behind them, which
can partially be explained through the other lines. Everyone’s orange line
may be different, but the average of most variant activities will form a bell
curve. Basically, consumer interest waxes then wanes over time as they
learn more information.
It’s important to note that none of the INVEST models are mathematical
calculations. In fact, this model is the closest to math that any of them get.
While some people might desire graphs backed by data, they often get so
caught up in the pursuit of proof that they fail to make a point at all. If you
insist on cold, hard evidence to do anything in life, you probably aren’t
truly a marketer.

The gray down-sloping line is the person’s

attention to the Information.
In this case, attention is a combination of two parts: Interest in the subject
and comprehension of the Information. Initially, both start out relatively
high as the consumer has decided that gaining knowledge is a priority. As
time passes, the Information gets more complex and lessens
comprehension. Attention is limited and time eats away at general interest
if a consumer is not informed and engaged properly.
This is not to denote a learning curve. The upward slope of the Information
line denotes learning. The Attention line is more about the transition from
simple ideas into more complex ideas and the inherent complications that
occur as more specialized information is shared.

The y-axis percent line signifies the general

amounts of each colored line.
The blue line of Information goes from 0 to 100 as a consumer learns the
first to last possible fact. It is highly unlikely that people want to know
every possible point of Information (100%). Attention goes from high to
low, leveling off at the midpoint as humans are prone to curb our
expectations as we get smarter about a subject.
You will notice that the orange line’s peak of likelihood only reaches 50
percent. Why would it be this way? Don’t companies want 100 percent?
There are two choices to be made in a purchase– yes or no. Never should a
company strive to force a choice. They should simply respect choice.
A person has a clear decision: With the optimal amount of Information on
the offering, do I buy or not? The orange slope upward before the dot
might be, “I think I might buy if I learn more.” The orange decline after the
peak, “I may not buy as I learn more or I am starting to lose interest.”

The point of the InfoGraph is that there is a

point.
There is a point when attention, information, and conversion likelihood
meet. When a person knows enough about a certain offering with
moderately comprehended education, this is when they are most likely to
buy. It’s that golden moment when they feel confident in knowing what
they know.

The orange dot is called the Conversion Point,

when a consumer is most likely to convert into a
customer.

The InfoGraph is meant to maximize the impact of information while

remaining sensitive to the constraints of time and attention. People are
limited in the amount of time they can devote to learning about the
offering.
This central point is when it is best to attempt the close. The consumer
should have an adequate sense of the offering’s value and needs to decide
on purchasing. Businesses need to capitalize on when the window is open
the widest. If people want to know more, they can. In fact, you can’t stop
them– not anymore.
The truth will always come out. Information needs to focus on tact and
timing. Some people need more information, others will need less.
Keep all of this in mind when organizing information, what many
marketers term as “content.” If a piece of Information doesn’t help increase
conversion likelihood and Value, it might be Information that is decreasing
comprehension or interest. Or it might be Information they would be
interested in after becoming customers.
Yes, some content is exploratory or simply educating a prospect on a
certain skill or fact. These should be considered as the starting points of
your Information line. Some companies say to first produce “awareness”
content about problems they face. But even then, a consumer will see the
company logo or menu. All information you produce is somewhat about
you.
The only true and pure “awareness” content would be a blog post on a
blank screen with no logo or menu.

Content creation can turn into an infinite blue

line of information.

Many understand that businesses are educators but fall prey to the thinking
that they just need to keep sharing information. While lots of content is not
bad, tons of content without a direct purpose is bad.
What do you do with this “information” on Information?
Organizing information is a self-evaluation. Have a long list session of
writing (or typing) as many facts as you can about the company and
offering. Exhaustive is optimal. Once you start to do this, many truths
begin to reveal themselves.
You will begin to realize how much subtle information is being
communicated. Often, strengths are revealed simply by looking at what’s
been there the whole time.
Share what is simple first.
Knowledge is a progressive journey, so start small. This is not always what
companies do. What may seem like simple knowledge to them is a
mysterious puzzle to the consumer.
The most complicated facts are usually not even necessary for a conversion
to occur. Do I really need to know what techniques of manufacturing were
used? On the other hand, talking down to people is also destructive. If you
are only sharing the simplest of facts, then the blue line stops and the
probability of the sale undoubtedly falls.
Of course, common knowledge to one is uncommon to another. We will
discuss in Strategy how to discern the needs of specific groups of people.
Segments of your market may even necessitate the consideration of an
InfoGraph specifically for them.
A common starting point is the name (and hopefully logo). You’d be
surprised at the revelations available just by taking a hard look at your
simplest asset.
The inspiration caused by the name and logo often lead to simple facts
about the offering(s). How many ___ do you have? What varieties are
available for ___? Once this primitive listing has occurred, more specifics
arise.
The beginning of the blue line does not significantly pull up conversion
likelihood. It’s when we start to learn the unfamiliar (as expressed by the
comprehension line) that likelihood begins to increase. We begin to know
what we did not know.
The simple exercise of listing all the information available about an
offering has been an eye-opening experience for many. It can be time-
consuming but is necessary to begin to INVEST in your marketing.
No one chart is going to solve every issue. What the InfoGraph can do is
illuminate what Information currently exists in the marketing efforts and in
what general order it is being communicated.
You can then base how you want to facilitate this information flow within
your marketing plans. If a simple point of information should belong at the
beginning of the blue line, a plan must be made to incorporate it earlier in
your marketing process.

All information is not in your control.

Do research on what’s being said about your offering and its competitors.
Online reviews reveal what people are learning about the offering and the
details they find most important. Social media or blog comments can help
you ascertain the desires or disappointments of consumers.
That upward line of Information is influenced by more than what you
control. Accept that and embrace it as part of reality. Yet, you can influence
information that you do not directly control.
Who communicates this information about you? That’s another way
marketing has gotten a lot more complicated. We rely on a complex
network.
 NETWORK
“I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles;
but today it means getting along with people.”
-Gandhi
Gandhi was probably referring to empires in times long past, such as the
muscular empires of Egypt or Rome, but empires of great size are
crumbling even today. While they didn’t ever own people or countries,
they did own our attention and even our opinions.
These expansive empires are traditional broadcasting and print media,
owned by a few conglomerates that answered to no one but the
governments in which their corporations resided.
Seth Godin and other smart marketers speak of an outdated system that
basically went like this: buy ads, get sales, increase distribution, buy more
ads. That was it, that was marketing.
Then the personal computer and internet arrived, followed by increasingly
connected mobile devices. Ignored by the titans of the ad age, they walked
into each of our homes and became a part of every household. We are now
connected and unshackled by the previous constraints of media
consumption. Now there are entire generations that don’t understand the
notion of nightly news at 6 p.m.
Instead, we have reverted back in many ways to a system of communities
rather than massive, homogenous groupings. Leadership means getting
along with people again. The power of the few spilled into the hands of the
many, if not all, and individual connections began to really matter again.

Look at your local Yellow Pages book and notice the lack of ads. Watch
your local news frantically try to put out interesting stories or even try their
hand at social media. News channels are even opening their own digital
marketing firms, surely to combat loss in revenue.
Before, people were viewers. They watched and listened and often did
what was advertised to them because the big media powers flexed their
muscles. Today, mass audiences have dissolved and society expects to
experience life customized to their individual wants and needs. Now,
“people” doesn’t matter so much as “person.”

Persons are participants.

A person will click a website, share a post, refer to a friend. Each person
has opinions and can voice them. Collectively, these individual actions
total into website traffic, click rates, and social interactions. But it took
each person doing it. No longer are the days of pure “mass marketing” to
the voiceless couch potatoes.
Marketing is not a function internal to your company but
something that happens in and out of the walls of your organization. Your
marketing is very much a community event where you are a moderator
rather than a presenter.

A voice is the communications about one subject

made by a person or group of persons.
For example, all of these materials and messages about INVEST is a voice.
A college professor's research on physics and her publications about it are
a voice.
A person or company may have many voices. A business coach does not
have a voice for cooking, but he may have a voice with his local golfing
community. An assisted living community has a voice about elder care but
not sports shoes.
A voice may be as simple as a mother and her opinions on how to feed her
children. It only affects Timmy and Sally, unless of course she starts a blog,
and then her voice’s reach begins to grow.
A voice is manifested in all of your online and offline communications. It
is your in-person conversations, speeches, and mannerisms. Your voice is
also all of your communications via traditional and online media. It is the
sum total of your publicly presented information on a subject.

A network is the intersection and connection of

voices.
A voice is the building block of a network. Networks can grow as other
similar voices join in and connect. A voice itself doesn’t grow. It can get
more exposure, more resonant in a sense as it connects to more voices that
speak a similar message. People can scream all they want; it only matters
who else is listening and responding.

Before the revolution, this square ran only

clockwise.
An individual voice bought ads or attention from the organizations. The
organizations paid experts to amplify the message. This forceful blast
reached into the homes of most communities, covertly influencing their
voice. When it got back to you, you could not reverse the flow and reach
out to the community voices, you had to buy more ads. If an individual
wanted to reach or become an expert voice, it almost always had to go
through an organization.

Back then you could express your voice to your neighbors or coworkers,
but you rarely had the power to join or oppose the larger network of media
voices. You weren’t invited to participate, merely subjected to listen.

The internet broke these walls and a sea of voices became available. Now a
network is more readily connected through apps, forums, video chat, and
other connective technologies.
To understand network, an interconnected matrix best illustrates the need
for communication and partnership.

Individual Voice is a single voice that has a

message to communicate.
It amounts to all communication, online or in-person, about a specific
effort or cause. Most ideas begin with a single person or group of people
that start off with limited network reach.
Organizational Voice is an organized collection of
voices that follow certain rules or patterns.
It could be broadcasting networks, companies, coalitions, fan clubs,
unions, governments, etc. These are collectives with shared goals, and they
adhere to certain rules.

Expert Voice is also a single voice that holds

influence and authority.
These are the “influencers” that you read about in other marketing books.
They can be willing to listen to other voices if it is like theirs. Others
highly value their opinion, but it is not easy or cheap to become or gain
influence in.

Community Voice is a large grouping of

individual voices that are similar but not
organized.
Their messages are the least organized, but they are the most numerous. Do
not mistake, this is not the mass market, which was a term to describe the
public as a sheep-like whole. That kind of grouping doesn’t work now that
the revolution has occurred. Community may be persons of similar
interests, a neighborhood, cultures, etc. They are very loosely organized
but large in size of voices. It is often this voice that is the driving force
behind viral hits.
Community voices often manifest as comments, forums, reviews, or even
smaller communities inside connective technologies such as a Facebook
group, a hashtag trend on Twitter, or even just a group of friends.

The orange dot in the center is the consumer.

All of the network’s public communications can now reach the consumer.
They should be the focus of that network and should be your focus. In
forming your network, always question, “How can this new voice help me
reach the consumer?” Once converted, find voices that can also help retain
that customer.

Connective technology is the modern medium by

which most voices connect and communicate.
Social media is not the only place that voices connect. Communications
can be had on chat, email, websites, and more. Some of the most important
connections are made outside of technology, through in-person
interactions.
Broadcasting made the mistake of thinking it was the last and best
platform for voices. While nothing beats word of mouth, our world will
rely increasingly on social technology for general communication.

The lines are communication streams.

The lines are modern communications, which can include email, YouTube,
SMS, forums, phone calls, Facebook, or even face-to-face conversation.
They are not meant to indicate a specific medium but the possibility of
connection across any voice. Your network is how you use all
technologies and opportunities to communicate your information to all
types of voices, consumers, and customers.
We are all human beings, and we crave to interact. Do not dismiss the
power of word of mouth in a technological age. The lines of the NetSquare
may also be meetings, events, speeches, networking, and other human
interactions. When modern technology entered the picture, it offered
unprecedented access to all parts of the NetSquare.
Each group could now reach each other, and the broadcasting
organizations began to lose their stranglehold on information flow. This is
denoted by the fact that all voices are connected by lines and that no flow
direction is designated.

Networking is communication between voices.

Any person or company starting a new message is an individual voice.
Marketing effectively involves listening to the other existing voices,
aligning yourself with them, and creating a network of resources. A non-
profit company may work with a government entity (organization) or a
neighborhood (community) or a political leader (expert), networking
around and through the square. There is no set path or flow when it comes
to creating a network.

Conversion is a shared event.

The consumer is the center of this model and all voices can reach the
consumer, illustrated by the straight lines. Yet, the voices also reach each
other, working together on the messages to convey. Relying on your
relationship with one type of voice is putting all your marketing eggs in
one basket.
“Network marketing” is a game of collaboration. Communicate your
message with others and work together with them. Wise marketers are
careful on how the messaging is created and watch how their network
deliver the message, offering advice and tweaking.

Voices can now change their role in a network.

If organization and community give heed and authority to an individual

voice, it can become an expert voice. If key individual and/or expert voices
work together, a community can be assembled into an organization.
However, individual voices cannot become a community or an expert
cannot transfer its expertness to an organization, just join or create one.
There is a plurality and singularity that exists
between the line-connected voices. Organization and
expert voices hold the rules and authority, yet the individual and community
hold the majority of consumers and flexibility.
However, not all individuals want to become experts and not all
communities want to become organizations. Many times, a network is
about the communication and not a transformation.
Technology (the lines) now allows any voice to speak to another, though it
is not necessarily heeded or even heard. The “mass market” is now an
intricate network with complex interactions between groups of voices that
cannot be reached simultaneously.
No one owns a network. To say “my network” can never denote
ownership, simply membership and eventually leadership. Instead, “my
network” really means “my voice” and its associated connections and
relationships within a network. You attempt to manage the flow of
influence by your diligent participation. It’s not that you should stop using
that phrase, but it is important to come to terms with the fact that you are a
piece to a much bigger puzzle.
Keeping that in mind, a network grows only when more voices connect. So
how do you leverage this knowledge of voices and network into achievable
actions?

Networks are organized, not created.

First, figure out what voice you are and what you want to become. The
direction you want to go depends on what you want to build.
Most voices start off individual. Align yourself with other types of voices
to increase the reach of your message. Recognize whether or not you want
to become an organization or expert or if you simply want to remain a
voice speaking a message.
For an organizational voice, you are building a platform from which to
gather similar voices. You will want to set rules and limits and make sure
the voices accomplish your common goals.
An expert voice is one that focuses less on collective and more on singular
messaging. You are desiring for people to seek you out to solve a problem
and you become their solution. It’s not so much about increasing your
collective voices as strengthening the effect of your voice.
Map all the voices you are connected to and how you plan to amplify your
message through them. If you are wanting to become a different type of
voice, plan how your marketing efforts will evolve you into that and how
your network can help you accomplish that.
To truly optimize your network, take a detailed look at its current state and
study how specific points of information are disseminated. As plans
develop based on INVEST, make sure that each point of information is
spread across the network to your surrounding voices.

Work the network!

Plan to regularly contact with other voices. Work the network! The truth is
that if you are not front of mind then the other voices will stop talking
about you. You need to be a part of their reality and be viewed as a
resource as well.
Network separated into two words reveals an interesting insight. Behind
all the meetings, paperwork, signatures, travel, etc. of professional life is
your “net work”– the real, genuine work you did with other human beings.
Never lose sight that voices and networks are individual persons.
Now we will discuss why the information shared to a network is
important. It is the Value of the offering.
 VALUE
“Science is nothing but perception.”
-Plato

A science of marketing is understanding and framing perception. How

people view and evaluate an offering is key to establishing value in the
market. To many, value feels almost mystical and ethereal, the magical
pixie dust of the business world. It can vary so wildly in the opinions of
two people that often it is ignored entirely as a measurement. Price gets a
lot of love because it's a concrete number.
Originally, Value would be covered under price in the four P’s. In today’s
world, we will pay hundreds for a music player (phone) yet insist that
music should be free. We pay exorbitant ticket prices for movies yet
complain when a movie rental exceeds $3. Prices on any item can range
greatly, and people do not always buy because of numbers they see.
Price is measured in a single linear way from inexpensive to expensive.
With that one-dimensional characteristic in mind, is price really an
adequate measure for modern marketing?
Price is important because it communicates an expectation of exchange,
but not all offerings in the market require currency. Some non-profits want
you to volunteer. A mobile game is free but makes you watch ads. Where
does price even apply in those situations? It is only a reflection of
something greater and more complex: Value.

Value is the total perceived worth.

It is not an exact number but a collection of three elements that make up
the offering’s worth. Value is divided into three parts– cost, quality, and
utility.
It’s important to understand the facets of Value to improve the perception
of it. Cost is the degree of personal sacrifice. Quality is the physical
attributes and aesthetics. Utility is advantages and changes afforded by
ownership.
Here is a simple example. A new car costs 60 months of payment. Quality
is the parts of the car and the clean, comfortable interior. Utility is its
ability to drive smoothly, feel smart, and impress neighbors. When the
three are combined, the value of the new car is realized. Each of the three
is different yet interconnected. Each serves to build a different aspect of
Value. Why are they important to understand?

Value is how an offering is positioned in the

market.
Value is an “in-depth” concept, so the best way to view it is in a non-linear,
3D space.

The three elements are the x, y, and z axis of the cube. If the upper and
lower limits for each element are defined, theoretically all market offerings
could be plotted inside the ValCube.
The dotted line is only there to help you visualize the depth and height of
the orange dot.
The orange dot can represent your offering or the optimal offering you
would like to provide that would have the highest likelihood of conversion.
The other dots are to illustrate that the offering is not alone in the market
and that your value is a reflection of its worth compared to other offerings.

The ValCube is a creative segmentation tool.

The mastery of marketing is not just playing the numbers. Breakthroughs
are discovered by smart work, intuition, and applying solid principles.
The ValCube is not going to pop out the next big idea. It is meant to inspire
and invoke imagination. These models are meant to be catalysts for
thought and contemplation.
For observational purposes, you could plot other existing products within
the cube, giving your own rough estimations. By so doing, you can also
observe parts of the cube that do not contain an offering and decide if that
is an area to be explored.

It’s OK to think inside the box, but ONLY in this

case.
A simple example of such a plot is new cars, not regarding specific brands.
Place them in the ValCube, moving from economy cars up to luxury cars.
If you do some research, at least at the time this was published, the
cheapest new car is around $12,000. One of the benefits of the ValCube is
to help recognize opportunities in the market. What if someone produced
an $8,000 new car? It would have less quality and utility, but it's a section
of the market that is currently not being served.

More than position, the ValCube shows the

importance of positively shifting Value.
A great example of how to shift value is Uber. Before ride-sharing became
popular, taxi services were difficult. You had to compete with the impatient
people around you or call and wait an unknown amount of time. You had
to pay immediately after it was over and if unfamiliar with the city, the cost
was unknown until the journey was completed.
Medium cost, highly variable (often not great) quality, and the main utility
was getting to your destination. Uber has disrupted the entire way that
people value rented transportation. A cost that can be lower than taxis is
only a small component of Uber's success.
Quality was increased as now the drivers must ensure a pleasant experience
due to a rating system. The utility is also much higher. You have peace of
mind knowing what it will cost, how soon it will get there, and the
convenience of not bothering with money.

As you see the two experiences in the same ValCube, you can understand
how changing Value determines the success of an offering in a market.

Improve value by decreasing the perception of

cost and increasing the perception of quality and
utility.
How is Value perceived? You guessed it— cost, quality, and utility. How
does each contribute to the overall perception of value?

Cost is the sacrifice of resources.

Money is not exactly something people love to give away. It is the most
obvious proof of Value but usually the most misleading. What we pay in
money does not always logically make sense.
The more compelling measures of cost are time, effort, and opportunity.
Those devoted people who waited in long lines for the newest phone were
not just giving up cold, hard cash. They gave up hours, physically standing
in line and potentially missing work because the Value of the phone far
exceeded the monetary cost. When considering position in the ValCube,
realize there’s more to cost than money.

To change the perception of cost, help people save

time, effort, and opportunity.
The money part can only get you so far. It’s hard to cut costs and decrease
price. It’s a race to the bottom in most cases. Change cost by reducing the
perception of it.
Elaborate on how the offering takes less time to learn or use. Show how
much easier it is to implement. List all the opportunities it now provides
the customer. The true cost is what you sacrifice minus the advantages
afforded.

Utility is the usefulness and intangible effects.

It is the intangible effect on a customer’s life and well-being. A new phone
helps a person be organized, have more fun, and access a wealth of
information. Often, people don’t realize all the benefits they could
experience. Therefore, utility is a matter of perception, a realization of
what the offering could represent in their life.

Increase perceived utility by improving the

communication of benefits.
It cannot be assumed that people will understand all the benefits of using
an offering. It needs communicated to them so they understand the utility
of it.
Show how quality of life or experience is affected positively, how
emotional well-being can be improved or how
productivity is increased. The consumer needs to visualize how being a
customer improves that part of their being.

Quality is the physical manifestation of cost and

utility.
On the top surface, Quality is what the offering is made of, the physical
components or experiences. Examples might be a well-built, durable home
or the clean office of a doctor. It comprises of all the elements that our five
senses experience.
However, the physical offering is really the tangible reflection of less
tangible elements. Human beings care most about intangible things like
love, sadness, appreciation, satisfaction, regret, fulfillment, and other
emotions. That is why it did not read that cost and utility are the intangible
manifestations of quality. That’s been the mistake of countless businesses.
They suppose that if they make the offering out of the highest quality
materials that people must be inclined to like it.
Quality is the most obvious element of Value, at least with physical
products. Much of product quality is out of the hands of marketing, at least
in most corporate structures.
This is where experience, a later section, is quite helpful. Quality is
perceived through our senses. Emphasizing and reinforcing sensory input
is key to improving quality. Also, connecting subtle physical cues to the
intangibles is just as important.

To maximize the perception of quality, focus on its

effect on cost and utility.
Communicate an offering’s qualities, especially regarding how they shape
perceived Cost or Utility. Sports cars look sleek and expensive and are
shown on commercials driving dangerously fast. By showing these
physical parts moving and shining, the commercial gets your blood to run
and your mind to excite, which is Utility. It looks expensive so you are
willing to spend the Cost.
Those feelings and thoughts are the driving forces of its conversion, not
just its horsepower or leather interior. Yet, the tangible Value of
horsepower and leather are the physical ways to communicate the full
intangible Values of Cost and Utility.

Your senses make an incredible number of unconscious connections. Wield

the human experience to your advantage and use sensory input to improve
quality, thus reinforcing cost and utility.

Consumers exist in the ValCube.

What types of people buy used cars as opposed to those who buy luxury?
Replace the three terms with personal expendable resources, physical
requirements, and needs/wants. You could then plot people in a separate
cube. (Some rich people still buy cheap things and vice versa.)
On average, people would pool in a similar fashion around the offerings in
a ValCube. What if there is a group of people that is not being served? Isn’t
that the gold of the business world– an untapped market? These insights
explain the previous note that the ValCube is a creative segmentation tool.
The unachievable section of the ValCube would be the top back left, no
cost but maximized quality and utility. We all wish for everything while
sacrificing nothing– the dream of the consumer. The undesirable part of the
cube would be the bottom front right, the highest cost with no quality or
utility and the dream of a profit-driven company. No offering could truly
exist there (in a free market at least) but the point would be to avoid
moving anywhere near it. Most offerings lie somewhere in between.
Remember that there are people in the ValCube, sections of the market that
desire for an offering of certain Value. There are gaps in what is offered
and what is desired. By shifting Value, you may reach a new group of
people.
People are given information within their network about the value of an
offering. But how is that communication transmitted? It is through our
Experiences.
 EXPERIENCE
“All men by nature desire to know. An indication of
this is the delight we take in our senses.”
-Aristotle

Our senses define our lives. All our life Experiences can be categorized
into sensory inputs.

The six senses of INVEST are sight, smell,

hearing, taste, touch, and thought.
Unless you are Buddhist, thought is not normally listed as a sense. Thought
is an emotional, cognitive sense– the internal processing of inputs. The
mind is used for all senses. Within this book, thought is processing
information or recalling memory. Discussing senses without this key
element is basically pointless.
Information, as discussed in the first section, must be communicated; it is
not just reading or seeing the Information. Senses are crucial, completely
and utterly unavoidable in the marketing process. Thoroughly breaking
down an Experience into sensory inputs is not common for most
businesses.
Here is a quick example:
A local foodie podcast tells a man about their social media account. He
gets on his phone and sees a picture in a post about their favorite cinnamon
roll. He reads more and thinks about it. The catchphrase was “Just how
grandma used to make them.” His grandma didn’t make them, but he does
remember that his mom made them and begins to salivate.
He hears about that cinnamon roll on the local radio while at the dentist.
Negating his cleaning visit, he goes to the bakery he heard about on the
radio. It’s warm and inviting and smells amazing. The cinnamon roll is
warm and crunchy as he sticks it with his fork. He then eats a delicious bite
of the cinnamon roll.
Many senses were affected in this example, leading him down a sensory
path toward the offering.
People perceive with all senses, not just sight. Studies have shown that
people think a room is cleaner if it smells like lemon, even if the rooms
look exactly the same. The sense of smell leads to a thought or perception
of cleanliness. Is it starting to make… sense?

Experience is the processing of sensory inputs.

The main point of this example is to show that there is a process occurring
in every marketing campaign, though maybe unnoticed. The stimulation of
one sense leads to the initiation of other senses, and this is crucial to
converting a consumer into a customer. All successful marketing
campaigns rely on this sensory conversion, whether they realize it or not.
A radar chart is particularly capable of portraying the multivariate data that
is sensory inputs.
This chart illustrates the senses involved in a particular marketing strategy
that communicates point(s) of information. A TV commercial mainly
involves the top three while a food sample table mainly involves the
bottom three. Consider what senses are involved in your marketing activity.
The number of involved senses in an ExperiChart is different for each
marketing activity it describes.

More positive appeals to senses increase

conversion likelihood.
Consider the two examples above, the TV commercial and the food sample
table. A TV commercial can be even more effective if it uses sensory
descriptive words about how something feels or smells. A sample table can
be more effective if there is a representative behind the table talking to you
about the product and asking you questions.
Every sense can be involved and none are irrelevant. Even if the offering is
accounting, smell does not need to be ignored. No one wants a smelly
accountant. Many clients might like the office to smell like cinnamon or to
get free candles as a gift every holiday season. Many simply choose to
ignore the less obvious senses.
These six sense categories are split into two groups– contact and abstract.

A contact sense is smell, taste, or touch; Abstract

is sight, hearing, or thought.
Contact senses involve a consumer having a close, tangible interaction
while abstract senses can be initiated regardless of physical proximity.

The dotted line is the boundary of proximity.

Abstract senses can be stimulated anywhere, by an extremely large number
of mediums. They do not require the recipient to be physically near the
activity or offering.
Contact senses need the physical presence of the consumer and require
more interaction. They are less common in marketing but have a huge
impact on memory. Humans have been tested to recall smell or tastes
decades after the initial experience.
The dotted line is to designate the difference between the groups of senses
but also this:

Cross the line!

Involve more senses! A memory is simply a composition of sensory inputs.
Do you want them to remember your offering? Churches are known to
encourage eating after a sermon. Perfume companies buy billboards. Fast
food companies use sizzle noises on audio ads. Each of these implements a
sense that crosses that boundary of proximity.

Due to the proximity issue, it’s important to note that some contact senses
can be initiated by proxy through abstract senses. The preceding example
of a fast food company playing an audio clip of
meat sizzling is a proxy example. The sense was not actually initiated but
your mind unconsciously associates that clip with previous sensory
memories of smell.
Furthermore, contact senses tend to be the final customer senses of product
Experiences. Conversely, abstract senses are often the customer senses of
service Experiences.

Measure your sense intensity.

By nature of human existence, all sensory inputs are not created equal. The
TV commercial’s most intense sense will be sight and hearing. A food
sample table will be taste. Its intensity is how much of the sense’s line will
be covered by orange. If a sense is left unused, no orange should cover its
line.
Think of the line as a rating of zero to ten. A zero is not being used at all or
only slightly by sheer accident. Ten would be extremely influential and
memorable.

It would probably be impossible to have a single ExperiChart with every

sense at ten, unless your marketing plan involves tripping on a really
hardcore drug.

The orange shape is the consumer experience.

The object of the ExperiChart is to outline and improve the sensory
experiences of marketing activities that eventually lead to and sustain
consumer conversion.
Every marketing activity can be paired with an ExperiChart. To then see
the overall effectiveness of your sensory experiences, you can layer the
charts on top of each other to gain new insights such as which senses you
might rely too much or too little on.
A goal of marketing is to initiate customer senses.
Create a customer ExperiChart with the senses
they should experience while using the offering. Use this as a reference
point of ways to encourage this experience with other senses along their
conversion path. The final customer senses are a true test of the
effectiveness of your marketing and often a direct result of the work of
product or service designers.

Multiple quality experiences increase the chances

of conversion.

The increase of the conversion likelihood line in the InfoGraph is due to

Information successfully communicated– by senses! Strong sensory
emphasis is a competitive advantage. Involve every sense; it will only
make it more memorable.
Certain offerings completely rely on certain senses and ignore others. The
greatest example of this is the introduction of sound to the cinema. Many
producers thought people only wanted to see and never considered our
desire to hear.

Be sensitive to senses.
Even just 20 years ago, the average consumer would not have thought
touch would ever matter to phones. Now we are addicted to the touch of
phones and use them less for calling. One may never know how the senses
may influence a shift in the market.
Just like the previous sections, you can and should be creative. Emphasize
senses that get ignored, or make connections that were not there before.
The key to changing your offering may be in the very sense you think
about the least.

There’s so much to each of these, so many ideas you can come up with. So
how do you choose which ideas to use? Strategy, the next section, helps
solidify our attempts to convert consumers by assigning reasons to our
marketing.
 STRATEGY
"What is of supreme importance in war is to attack
the enemy’s strategy."
- Sun Tzu
What better author of strategy is available than the wise Sun Tzu?
Marketers are not at war, but consumers are. They fight with so many
issues and problems, not always dealing with them in logical ways. Instead
of viewing it as a battle against them, see Strategy as planning to end their
fight– to beat their fight for them. Get them peace and resolution.
Empathy is the key to ending the struggle, understanding the consumer
better than they understand themselves. You must understand their self-
imposed identity, the problems they face, and the perceived and available
solutions.
Study to understand them and do your best to predict their actions. A
recent emphasis in personas in marketing automation is evidence that this
is true. Once you understand their fight, you are better capable of helping
them win.

When you know what can happen, you can

influence what will happen.
Strategy is not a new word. It’s been around a long time and is used in the
business world almost as much as the word “the.” It is interesting to note
the significance of the prefix “strat.” One of its meanings is “layer,” which
works well with the next model.
Strategies
never involve a single object; it is always a plan that one entity is
attempting to influence another.
A huge trend currently is to base strategy off “big data,” and that this is
the best way to do marketing. However, “big” and “best” are two different
things.
Don’t misunderstand. Ethically-acquired statistics are extremely valuable,
but you can still make great strategies without the assistance of hardcore
math or big data. Plato believed, “A good decision is based on knowledge
and not on numbers.” Numbers are a method, not a mandate.
Life is simply too complicated and random to be governed by laws and
rules and trends that work 100% of the time. You will even have customers
that decide your offering is not the solution, and that is OK. Your job is to
convert the ones you can help.

Strategy is improving congruence between a

person, offering, and problem.
In every marketing situation, there’s a person or group of persons that are
your consumers. Your offering exists within their reach, solving a problem
that they need resolved. The goal is to get these three elements to align in a
coherent manner.

A Venn diagram is great at communicating this congruence and how

ignoring or over-emphasizing one relationship can be detrimental to your
overall marketing efforts.
The StrateGram ensures that every marketing
effort improves the overall strategic effectiveness.
Each hexagon is a separate entity, no matter how effective a strategy might
be. What is being measured, the gray overlapping, is the similarity or
congruency shared by two elements.

A person is any consumer to which the offering

and problem could apply.
In this section, you focus on them as an individual human being who can
benefit from the offering. They may even be a group of people, but never
lose sight that a group is just a bunch of persons.

An offering is a product or service.

The purpose of the offering is to solve a problem while being usable and
appealing to a customer. Focus on what specific services or products that
the customer receives. Also, think about how your mission, values, culture,
and branding affect the offering.

A problem is the issue that needs resolved.

We all have problems– they are the one infinitely renewable resource. I’ve
always found it interesting that some people have exactly 99 problems. The
true challenge is getting a person to make the effort to check a problem off
their list. 98 problems left!

Representation is the similarity between an

offering and a person.
How do they view it specifically and how does it in any way represent
them? Do the two have things in common? Focus on commonality of brand
and not the issues.

Realization is a person’s awareness of the

problem.
Given that our list of problems is endless, no one will count all their
problems or view them in the same level of disdain. Some problems
technically don’t need solved, though they could be. What matters is
making the opportunity of solving this specific problem have value to them
that equals the cost to obtain resolution.

Resolution is how the offering is perceived to

solve the problem.
This overlap should hone in on how the problem is specifically or
systematically resolved. This should be focused on events or
transformations resulting from an offering’s application. This area focuses
on the benefits the person receives from no longer having the problem.
The center triangle of conversion likelihood grows
bigger when the strategy is improved.
The middle triangle is much like the peak of conversion likelihood on the
InfoGraph. It does not deal with a time period but more of an overall
likelihood. Its growing size is the purpose of the StrateGram, and it
indicates consumption.

This is no easy challenge. Often companies only focus on one connection.

By only strengthening resolution, the consumer may not care at all for the
offering or doesn’t care to fix the problem. The StrateGram emphasizes a
necessary three-fold focus.
So how is this practically applied? Like any other principle of INVEST, it
breaks down a complex issue into parts that can be evaluated and
implemented in formal plans.
Define what each hexagon represents. It is better to focus on a single
offering and specific type of person and problem.
Each point of Information should be considered through the lens of which
area it serves— representation, realization, or resolution. Some things may
be represented in multiple areas.
As each of these sections receive a tactic, they fill the space. As tactics
fulfill that purpose, the two involved objects draw closer together, aligning
as more tactics encourage affinity. If all tactics are positively drawing the
hexagons together then the center triangle will
grow. It then becomes quickly obvious that certain points of information do
not help any of the three.
For example, an online ad shows how an offering solves a problem. That
would be resolution. A pamphlet shows statistics on how likely you are to
have a condition– realization. A commercial has country music, shown to
people in Tennessee– representation. In a sense, each of these examples is
working to make the layers larger by populating them with specific actions
you discerned from previous principles. The more strategies there are, the
more these three will overlap.
If it is a detriment, it is pushing them apart. Many companies have
strategies that may be increasing the effect of one connection while
decreasing the effect of another. It is not to say that certain strategies will
always be 100% positive, but why do something that hurts more than
helps? A perfect example is a political campaign.

The purpose of the StrateGram is strategic

balance.
The optimal StrateGram is the one first pictured, where representation,
realization, resolution and conversion likelihood are equal and balanced.
As you continue to add strategies, make sure they do not begin to favor one
over the other.
The StrateGram should reflect intentions, and balance is a sign of good,
meaningful intention.
The StrateGram is planning the plan, estimating the effects and
interactions of your methods. It does not cover elements like processes,
timing, etc. While the next section on Technology does involve some
processes, no singular model structure can adequately summarize how all
marketing activities should be processed.
The StrateGram is also a good place to begin if other models are difficult
to grasp. It is likely the most familiar of the models, being that similar
graphs have been made like it before. Inspiration from the StrateGram can
then lead to inspiration for other parts of INVEST.

One way to spark the specifics is to begin with a general idea. The iPod as
a concept was stated to be “1000 songs in your pocket.” It solved
realization by fixing the problem of portability– our pockets don’t fit CDs
and their players. If you are starting off with little but your offering, create
some ideas that can easily turn into real applications. For example, “Our
car wash should be 80s themed.” That solves representation by aligning the
current, busy parenting generation with an offering.

Not every strategy works, but the lack of a

strategy always never works.
These models can help produce the light bulb moments a business
desperately needs. But it requires you to do something. Think! INVEST
encourages you to exercise both sides of your brain. When you understand
and believe in your own strategies, you can make plans and goals to
execute them with greater diligence and passion.
Socrates made an amazing point when he said, “As for me, all I know is
that I know nothing.” Great philosophers help us understand that we must
think and reason, use logic and truth, and give up the pursuit of thinking
we can know everything.
So many business owners who stare perplexed at their device screens and
say, “I don’t even know where to start.” It’s not about a start or even finish.
It’s about all the complicated steps in between, and Technology is the
reason INVEST even exists.
 TECHNOLOGY
“The greater the difficulty, the more the glory in
surmounting it.”
-Epicurus
If it weren’t for the internet, there would be very little reason for INVEST.
You could still probably get by with the four P's and blissfully live in your
internet-less world doing whatever TV and radio told you to do.
Yet, the world has changed, and billions of people are now connected.
They might possibly be too connected. Many internet marketing efforts can
be like a single scream in a stadium of roaring people. How is this
“connectivity” leveraged to an advantage? How can we obtain glory in
surmounting this great difficulty?

Technology is a mechanism that benefits

consumer conversion.
There are many avenues by which to facilitate this communication. The
internet started with simple websites, and now is expansive social media
networks, databases, countless blogs, connected devices and more. Just as
we finish talking about the newest app or program, a new company pops
up.
How do we navigate this ever-stretching landscape? What is technology’s
true relationship to the process of converting consumers into customers?
It almost feels as we are navigating a complex maze when we confront all
of this. Actually, we are!
Technology is inherently messy because it's used
by humans.
Technology is not a linear process, even if you want it to be. A consumer
will look at a site and then look at Facebook and then forget you. She
sees an ad two weeks later and signs up for your email newsletter. Three
months later she sees a shirt that her cousin would like and posts it to
Facebook. The cousin doesn’t want it, but his friend who saw the post
gets on and orders the shirt right away.
Yet why encourage the complexity of a maze? The simple fact is that all
human interactions, including interactions with technology, are not a
straight line. We are too variable and spontaneous to just go forward
without deviation, especially in our modern world. Websites, apps, and
networks are not simple one-action devices that produce a customer
instantly.
In marketing, technology should lead
to transactions and associations.
The goal is simple: Create economic wealth by providing an offering and
retain the customers you obtain so they continue to use the offering and tell
others about it.

All technology should serve one these six

marketing purposes: initiation, investigation,
observation, interaction, transaction, and
association.
Each of these purposes is a step toward a consumer becoming a customer,
combining the previous five principles of INVEST into this final one.
Each layer of the TechnoMaze will be called a path because it is a maze.
The first four are consumer paths, and the last two are customer paths.
Like a maze, your purpose is to get the person to the center.

The gates are consumer actions that lead to a new

path.
A quick example is clicking a Google search entry to a website, leaving the
investigation path into the observation path. One job as a marketer is to
create an appropriate number of gates that facilitate easy entry into new
paths.

Initiation is triggering a need or desire.

This path is outside of the maze because everyone exists here. They are
going about their day, unaware or unmotivated to fix their problem. Here is
where you do those activities that get their attention and point out their
ignored dilemma. This often serves as a place to initiate realization as
described in Strategy.
The gates here are any advertising or marketing you do that focus on
problem-solving. A gate may also be the consumer’s realization that they
have a problem. An over-simplified version of this might be the “Got
Milk” campaign. Many stores benefited from its simple triggering, even if
they paid nothing for that ad. But it was about a simple problem, the lack
of milk.
Voices in your network can bring attention to the consumer’s needs. The
voice of an advertising organization or the podcast of an expert can initiate
people’s desire to satisfy that need.
Since the consumer is probably not physically present, many of the senses
in this path are abstract or abstract acting in proxy for contact. Simple data
tend to be communicated here so it is usually the beginning of the facts in
the InfoGraph.
Do you see how it is all beginning to culminate into a full marketing
method? Each of the principles build upon and within each other.

Investigation is concerted searching.

Don’t get excited yet; they still aren’t looking at your offering. When they
enter past the black line, then they are looking at you specifically.
Search engines and directories fall into this category. It is good to keep in
mind that social networks also have search functions. To optimize this
path, a company must provide multiple gates. Advertising and search
engine optimization are two key elements of this path when it comes to
technology.
Do you show up in the major search engines either organically or in ads?
Does your social media contain phrases people might be searching for
there? Do you share content where consumers are trying to solve a need?
If you are not available to be found, there is no gate.
A major issue to keep in mind is that the consumer is in the investigation
path of any company offering to solve their problem, not just you. This
means at any moment, they could go into observation of another
company’s offering.
Besides optimizing your search, strive to strengthen realization by showing
how you and the consumer have traits in common. Use your network to
have them talk about your ideas and brand.
Gates are created here by being as available as possible to any kind of
searching function and existing near content that relates to your offering.
How might you encourage people along this path? Be a part of the
conversation when someone asks something on Reddit or Quora. Sponsor a
page on a complimentary service related to your offering. Use keywords in
your Facebook About section that are words people would use to search for
your type of offering.
Be present and aware of conversations and trends.

Observation is focused learning.

The person has entered your realm and decided to stay. They are now
focused on you, for the most part. Information is highly requisite in this
path. The consumer wants to learn more. While the arc of conversion
likelihood is shooting up, their attention will not hold forever.
They may circle the path a bit, collecting information like Pacman
collected dots. If they circle too long and you miss the conversion point,
their attention drops and they will leave. How do you keep them?
It is in observation that you can really establish the Value of the offering by
strong sensory Experience, implementing the Strategy of resolution.
This path is your website, app, and social media page. It could even be the
inside of your establishment and any technology available there such as
TVs, signs, brochures, labels, etc.
This is where much of the Information in the InfoGraph will reside. This
path is your most informative destination and needs to be the friendliest, so
it is important to focus on availability and user experience. Your site needs
to be easy to navigate and mobile friendly. Your social media needs to be
organized. Your store needs to be clean and your people helpful.
The TechnoMaze is a lot like a museum. The point is to learn, not to rush
through quickly. And more importantly, if your art sucks they will leave.
There’s a reason they are called gates. Doors can be closed and a person
can be forced forward. An archway gate does not hinder flow either way.
Without governmental or legal coercion, they simply are gates.

Interaction is initiating and managing

communication.
The consumer likes the offering. She makes the crucial decision to start
interacting, which means she desires communication. She needs more
Information than is presented, or maybe she just wants to test that you are
authentic.
It’s here that you solidify Value through cost and quality. Utility is often
used to boost their confidence in your offering. You are giving real
example on resolution and more contact senses are being used. At this
point, conversion is up to you, not your network. They are close to that
conversion point and know that they know.
This path involves more human interaction than the previous two. Social
media is still very new but is a great example of this level: We have the
power to comment and ask questions.
Interaction is not just the technologies themselves but the conversations
they allow to be facilitated. Email, live chat, phone calls, and face-to-face
are the interaction path. Anything that allows communication is
interaction.
Your sales functions reside in this path and the next.
Consumers work hard for their money and highly value both it and their
time. They know there are other choices if they are ignored, disappointed,
or distracted. Therefore, don’t use social media unless you intend to
interact. If you don’t have the time, do not make the mistake of feigning
participation. An inactive Facebook is like having an open sign on a
locked door. It’s confusing.
When they have sufficient knowledge at the peak of conversion
likelihood, they will want to become customers. The gates are the buttons
or prompts that encourage that transaction, such as an online cart, sign-up
form, or checkout counter. They are at the conversion point.

Transaction is the process of exchange.

This is where a consumer becomes a customer and receives the offering.
Checkout interfaces or even real world purchases are part of this, as well
as the actual act of receiving the offering.
Transaction can include shipping and tracking, packaging, technical
support, installation and implementation, updates, user interfaces–
anything that involves the offering’s payment, arrival, and additional
support. This isn’t just talking about resolution, this is doing it!
Ease the cost of value by making the process simple and rewarding.
Ensure that they are experiencing positive customer senses. Get your
network to congratulate them and welcome them.
Some offerings just ask for our time or maybe our email, and then the
company can convert that currency into profitable or positive output.
Many businesses are perfectly fine with customers reaching this path, but
notice that this is not the last path.

Association is lasting conversion.

This path is in some ways beyond technology and into the realm of
psychology. If a person enters this level of your offering, they not only own
it but desire it. It becomes a part of their life, associated to them in a deeper
manner than just the exchange of currency. This is where fans, sponsors,
and volunteers dwell.
Your offering means much more to them than a regular customer. It’s these
people that remain loyal and typically have the highest ROI. They actively
work to bring others to this path– marketing done for free!
Any technology used here is meant to nurture this symbiotic relationship.
Strengthen their concept of the offering’s value by giving more sensory
information that strengthens representation, satisfies realization, and eases
resolution. Invite them to your network and listen to their needs as their
input becomes a part of your information.
A gate to this path might be a customer rewards program, social sharing
after purchases, fan club membership, or an email campaign. Some
companies go as far as allowing customers to have input in their products.
Speaking of relationships, many other business books have argued that
business should be relational and not transactional. That’s wrong! Here’s
why.

Businesses should be transactional and relational.

Business is transactional. It’s not something you can avoid and still operate
without bankrupting. You must get some kind of exchange as you are the
recipient of the Cost. Of course, you don’t have to be pushy or rude, thus
diminishing your Value.
It’s just that most businesses don’t make the effort to be relational as well.
You can get your payment while still remaining friendly and helpful. For
some reason, we have convinced ourselves that the two are mutually
exclusive and that a company can only be one of them.

The TechnoMaze is a conversion map, drawing

from the strength of the other five principles.
This is not a simple process, and that’s exactly why it’s represented as a
maze. People just don’t follow a linear path when it comes to becoming a
customer.
You may fail to lead your customers into the path of association. In most
cases, they leave the transaction path and return to investigation or leave
entirely. Though they may have purchased something, it is on a much
lower emotional level.
Surely you have seen a mouse maze on television or the internet. The
mouse goes to where the reward is located. If you do not have a sufficient
reward waiting in the middle, why should a customer stay? After they
consume your reward, do you reward them again
periodically or are you naive enough to believe they will stay when they
smell a reward in a different maze?
There’s a bit to learn in the different terms. If you treat a customer like a
consumer, they will go back to consuming. If you give a customer a
custom experience, they won’t go back to consuming.
Technology can accomplish so much that our predecessors would have
seen as pure magic. It now goes beyond just wearing a shirt with the logo.
These ongoing customer relationships serve a purpose in building lasting
associations in the minds of the customers.
You can’t always be there, but the impression of you and your offering can
be. People voluntarily become avid proponents of your offering, defending
even its major flaws. They become your retention tools.
As each of the models of INVEST, your efforts should be centered on
conversion. Bring people in, give them a place to resolve their problem,
and include them in the joy of the experience. Let them become a part of
your efforts.
They INVEST in you.
CONCLUSION
First of all, thank you for reading, it means a lot. If you have input or
thoughts, please feel free to check out the accompanying website.
Let’s INVEST in something better. My desire is that you can build upon
the principles outlined and apply them to your own efforts. Please reread
the book if possible as you will begin to see how it is interconnected, how
each principle complements another.
Not to be grandiose but I’ve realized something about marketing and life
itself. People often say, “Think outside the box.” But have you ever
wondered, “Wait, how did I get in a box? Who put me here? Why is this
box full of P’s? Who says I should stay in the box?” Besides thinking
inside the ValCube, we should not limit ourselves.
IMPLEMENTATION
I have a consultation program called INVEST in Marketing™. It is a full
course that helps a business implement this method into their current
marketing processes.
If you’re not ready for something like that, please go to the website and
you will find several resources that let you learn more about INVEST and
other tools to help you begin to implement it in your marketing efforts.
To begin implementing The INVEST Method today, check out the free
downloads at www.theINVESTmethod.com/resources

CONVERSIONISM
Shakespeare was one of the greatest philosophers of all time; through his
plays he communicated subtle, profound truths. In “Romeo and Juliet,”
Juliet lamented, “What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other
name would smell as sweet.” Yet, it was names that killed Romeo and
Juliet. There’s a lot in a name– that’s the tragedy of the play. The two star-
crossed lovers could not exist together possessing separate names.
I hate the name “Marketing.” I hate the name “Sales.” What should be a
love story of their efforts is fraught with the tragedy of contempt and
competition. I couldn’t admit this at the beginning of the book because
marketing by any other name might not “smell as sweet.”
I challenge you this one thing. Go back through the book and cross out
every time it says sales or marketing and write the word “Conversion.”
You see, I’m pulling back the curtain for a moment to show my true desire.

To my knowledge, I’m the world’s first Conversionist. One day, I hope

there’s no such thing as a Marketing department and a Sales department. I
hope that one day there’s a Conversion department. I hope its influence
permeates into management roles across organizations and every
department has Conversion goals.
That’s the dream, at least.
CARL HOLDEN
https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlholdenmarketing
I’m not a college professor or a CMO of a large corporation. I run a
marketing company. I actually DO marketing. I get to see what works
and what does not.
I believe the marketing being taught is not the marketing being
performed. My college degree has little to do with my profession. This
realization affected me and drove me to think about an alternative to
what I was taught.
INVEST started on a sheet of paper while at a boring desk job. It is
partly what inspired me to strike out on my own. After years of testing
and developing, you read the result.
Now, I teach it to other people. I’ve shared it in talks, schools, and inside
companies. We can change marketing to be a more systematic yet
flexible business activity that bases decisions on data AND logic.

I’m excited to see how INVEST continues to change and improve. Check
out its accompanying website at: www.TheINVESTmethod.com
All reviews are greatly appreciated!
There are several blank pages throughout this book. Please feel free to
write your notes and plans there!