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Profitable Marketing Branding Manifesto 2022
Profitable Marketing Branding Manifesto 2022
What Is Marketing?
Let’s begin with a few key distinctions. We’ll use a few general definitions for the purposes of this
report and lesson.
Marketing: Communication that gets paying customers.
Entrepreneur: A person who builds a profitable business.
Entrepreneurial Marketing: Communication that gets paying customers in order to build a growing,
profitable business. Since marketing is a specific type or category of communication, let’s “drill down”
into the meaning of communication, just to get a sharper focus...
Communication: Is about the successful transmission of meaning. The indicator that you’ve
achieved successful communication (in the higher sense) - that the message has gotten across and has
landed is:
1. Things become linked in the mind of the other person that weren’t linked before
2. The emotion of surprise is triggered by this linking and insight
3. Something new becomes possible that wasn’t before
4. Behavior changes as a result
5. The meaning of experience is changed permanently for the other person
If you haven’t accomplished these, then what you’ve done is not what I would call “communication.”
It might be called “talking” or “saying something” or “trying to communicate”... but it’s not real, effective
communication. The way we have defined a successful entrepreneur is through their results. In my
definition, an entrepreneur is someone who builds a profitable business. No profitable business, and I
have a hard time giving them my “seal of approval” of being a bonafide entrepreneur. They might be an
aspiring entrepreneur, or they might be entrepreneurial in their thinking, but they’re not a “real”
entrepreneur until they have the real-life experience of building a profitable business. Similarly, if you
haven’t transmitted a message to the other person that really impacts them, motivates and inspires them
to change, and gets them to do something, then you haven’t really achieved communication.
The root of the word communication is “commune” - which evolved from words that mean to have
dealings with, make common, to share. Communing is about sharing in community, and communication
is about sharing knowledge in community. The root of the word marketing is “market.” A market is where
there are people buying and selling from each other, and reaching agreement on prices. Marketing is
taking the concept of the market and turning it into a verb. It’s almost like a contraction of market-make-
ing... market-ing. Marketing, in a higher sense, is the process of doing what it takes to get people to
come and do business with you, to come and make a market with you.
In Neuro-Linguistic Programming, they have what I think of as a mindset shift - and it’s one of my
favorites. It goes like this:
“The meaning of a communication is the response that you get.”
To put it another way, this means that if you share information or knowledge with others, that there’s
a highly effective way to decide what your communication actually “meant” to the receiver:
Watch the response they give you.
This flips normal thinking on its head, and puts the responsibility on the person sending the
communication to make sure it lands. In the case of your marketing and branding, you’re the one sending
the communication, so you have to start watching the response of your customers to know the meaning
of what you’re saying!
There’s a trend in education toward the idea that the responsibility of making sure that a child
understands the lesson is on the teacher, and that if the child doesn’t learn, then the teacher didn’t teach.
It’s a similar mindset. I happen to like these ways of thinking about communication, as they really put the
weight and responsibility of making sure that a message gets through... on the communicator.
Marketing - and the particularly powerful form of marketing called branding (which we’ll discuss in a
moment) - is a type of communication that’s designed to get very specific results. The results we’re after
is people coming and buying from you, and paying you for what you’re offering. In fact, you can know and
measure the results of your marketing in a clear-cut way by actually measuring how many sales you make
from each marketing communication that you use. I have been tracking, measuring and analyzing the
marketing I do for over 15 years now, and my experience is that this is one of the most important things
you can possibly do in your business.
If you engage in marketing without understanding these mindsets and definitions, and without
making a strong personal commitment to master the skill of getting people to take the action of buying
your product or service based on the impact of your marketing communications, then you’ll likely fail at
the business you’re trying to build.
To summarize, the point here is that marketing is about effective communication. And if you get your
communication right, then your customers will make new mental connections, they’ll be surprised by the
insight, their behavior will change into buying behavior, and the meaning of their life experience will
change.
And here’s the next leap: The meaning of their life experience changes because after doing business
with you, they will then associate your brand with the solution they wanted unconsciously, and think
of your brand when they see similar situations in the future. And this is the beginning of effective
branding...
This “illusion of familiarity” and the feeling of understanding mislead us into believing that we have
mastery in an area that we don’t. If we want to create powerful marketing and branding - the kind that
brings a growing stream of paying customers to us - then we must take the psychology and practice of
marketing and branding seriously, and we must get the most cutting-edge knowledge that we can... and
apply it. We can’t make the mistake of guessing, assuming that we understand it, and then investing
time, effort, energy and money in marketing ideas that were destined for failure.
What Is Branding?
There are a lot of different ideas about what branding is, and why we should do it. Most of these
ideas, in my experience, are based on what we think that companies are doing to brand themselves,
rather than on what successful companies are actually doing. Branding has become a “sexy” word, along
with the word “positioning.” The problem is that most people really don’t know what these two things
are, or how to do them successfully in a business.
Humans tend to naturally want social status and fame. We want people to know who we are, and to
look up to us. We are naturally attracted to anything that we think will make us more famous, get us
more recognition, or make other people think that we’re cool and attractive. And it follows that most
common ideas about branding and positioning can be boiled down to “ways to make other people think
that you’re cool.”
This is problematic not just because it’s the wrong idea, but because it also prevents you from looking
for the right idea. Remember, we’re focused on building entrepreneurial success here, which is defined as
building a profitable business. And in the Accelerate methodologies, we’re also focused on shifting into
high-growth mode. So we want both high growth and profit, so we can increase our income - and keep
increasing it.
In the context of building a business that grows and makes profit, branding must be approached very
differently than most people approach it. To understand why, let’s take a look at some of the most
successful brands in history.
In my view, large companies that spend billions of dollars on branding are spending most of it on
defensive branding. They have achieved massive success with their products and services, and their
branding strategy is to make sure that no one forgets them. It’s literally a strategy primarily designed to
prevent loss of market share, not to grow it. A company like Apple or Microsoft or Google... or Starbucks
or McDonalds or Lexus... is at the “top of the food chain” in the business world. They have achieved a
level of success that maybe one in a million companies will ever achieve. Once you’re on the top, the only
place to go is down, and there are a lot of others trying to push you off of the mountain.
Defensive branding is what you do when you have a billion dollar company, and you need to prevent
yourself from losing market-share. When you’re that big, the game is to prevent others from getting into
your mind-slot, not to get into the mind in the first place. Really getting this and seeing this motive and
strategy behind the expensive branding campaigns that most large companies follow turns on a lightbulb
that can really be valuable to you.
time” when they need to send a package. It’s just not a memorable phrase. But it does make a statement:
We’re the big guys, and we can afford to just be in front of you with our message. That’s a powerful
branding strategy if you’ve got a billion-dollar company (FedEx is actually the largest air carrier in the
world based on total weight carried - if you can believe that - so they’re way beyond the billion dollar
level).
Using an image-based, defensive branding strategy costs a lot of money. And it’s just not the kind of
thing that makes sense for a growing company that needs the money to do other things (including make
the owner - YOU - more income).
Example #1: The Aerogel insulation company sent a mountain climber up Mt. Everest wearing a pair
of their new insulated socks. After the climb, they asked him how it went. He said “The only problem I
had was that my feet were too hot.”
Example #2: Viagra - and I hope you know what that is - ran a series of television commercials as
they grew into one of the most successful drugs in history. You’ve probably heard it. At the end of the
commercials, they always issued a health warning in very serious pharmaceutical talk. It said: If your
erection lasts more than four hours, call your doctor.
These are not just good marketing, or even great marketing. These achieve that level of psychological
persuasion power that can only be described as impossible to resist. A guy climbs Mt. Everest and comes
down to complain that his feet got too hot because the socks he was wearing worked too well...? Anyone
that has feet that get cold, or wants to buy clothing to keep them warm will immediately say “those are
the socks for me.” The warning says to call your doctor if your erection lasts more than four hours.
Imagine that you’re a guy who hasn’t been able to perform sexually for months or years, and you hear
that “warning.” There’s not much you could say that would get his attention faster or more “perfectly.”
Example #3: We already discussed FedEx. Their original unique selling proposition of “When it
Absolutely, Positively has to be there overnight” is pretty stellar. I think it might qualify to make the list of
best marketing ever. At the time they started this marketing campaign, the idea of overnight package
delivery was brand-new. It was an option that people didn’t have before, and they had a big opportunity if
they could get into the minds of their potential customers with an action-oriented message. And the
words “Absolutely, Positively”... well, they absolutely, positively did it.
And notice how each of them does it in a way that doesn’t sound like “ego” or like it’s all about the
company that’s promoting the product. They keep the focus on the customer and the customer’s need.
There’s no interruption of the customer’s realization that they need to get the product or service, so they
can get the result they want.
When someone buys an SUV, they are being driven by a very primal, hidden psychological motive,
that he discovered by putting people into darkened rooms and regressing them to childhood memories.
The motive is DOMINATION. Someone buying an SUV wants to dominate the road, and be seen as the
dominant animal - to be feared and avoided. Here’s where it gets interesting: Rapaille then helped the
company, Dodge, design their trucks so that looked like the jaws of large apex predator animals. His
reasoning was that big predators have large jaws and jaw muscles, and this was one of the defining
features that made them so fearsome. And if you look at some of their trucks from the period when he
was working with them, you can see it.
Is this science? I don’t know. Is it interesting? You bet. Their SUV sales apparently took off when he
was working with them. I give you this example to get across just how sophisticated you can get with
your marketing, and also to communicate the importance of taking your marketing education seriously.
I’ve invested a lot of years studying marketing, and I credit this study with my ability to generate the kinds
of traffic, sales and growth that I do with my businesses. It really works to know your marketing.
So how can you find your own “big jaw muscles” or your “socks that make your feet hot on Mt.
Everest” in your product and marketing? Here’s how...
Lorenz was famous for working with geese and other birds. In one set of experiments,
they made a fake goose egg that was much bigger than a normal goose egg, with exaggerated spots
painted on it. When a real goose saw the giant fake egg, guess what it did? The giant egg was so
captivating, that the goose ignored its own eggs and tried to sit on top of the giant fake egg. The giant
egg was literally IRRESISTIBLE.
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Ethologists use phrases like “fixed action patterns” and “innate releasing mechanisms” - which are
technical terms for the automatic, instinctive responses that animals have in response to certain things in
their environment. A white round egg makes a goose automatically try to roll it into its nest. But if it’s a
GIANT round egg, the goose abandons its own eggs, and tries to climb on top. I can just imagine the look
on the goose’s face when it sees that giant egg. It must feel like a kid that comes home to find a 3-foot
tall chocolate cake on the kitchen table.
But the ethologists kept going and learned something interesting: If they isolate and test individual
aspects of the stimulus, they often find these features that make the animal respond more and more
powerfully. Ethologists have a name for these types of features, they call them “Supernormal Stimuli” -
and they are very powerful. These supernormal stimuli release automatic, irresistible action patterns.
It’s tragic when I see an entrepreneur who has gone to years of trouble creating a great, high-quality
product - one that delivers the result that customers want - only then to go on and use “logic” marketing
to try to sell it. Irresistible eggs aren’t irresistible because they make logical arguments. They are
irresistible because of the instinctive response in the goose. Don’t make and market a product that’s a
good logical choice. Make and market a product that triggers the “gotta have it” response.
What is the result that your customers really want? What would your product or service need to offer
that would be an irresistible egg for your customers, and make them want to buy it right now?
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customers by marketing our product as a more broad solution. This, of course, is a mistake. People tend
to buy specific solutions to specific desires, not general solutions.
What we’re really after here is to discover the super-normal stimulus that your customer is using to
decide what to buy, and then to feature that in all of our marketing and communication with customers.
And when we’re using a magnifying glass, we keep getting more and more specific, until we hit the nail
right on the head.
A friend of mine told me an interesting story about Ferrari cars. I had one for awhile, and I can tell you
from experience that it’s quite a thrill to drive. The part I found interesting was that apparently Enzo
Ferrari paid careful attention to what really pushed customer hot buttons, and he realized that the motors
in the cars were a key driver of the decision to purchase a Ferrari. If you’ve ever looked at the motor in a
Ferrari, you can see that a lot of attention is paid to the styling and design. Of course, they are also very
powerful and responsive. Some of the Ferrari models even feature a window over the motor, so you can
look into the motor compartment directly without having to open the hood (I had one of these, and it
really ups the “cool factor”).
So notice what’s happening here (other than me bragging): We’re zooming in. From car to motor to
being able to see the motor directly, because it’s such a hot-button motivator. Next, Ferrari realized that it
was more than just the power and looks of the motor, it was actually all about the sound of the motor.
My friend told me that Ferrari believed that about 50% of the “game” when it came to building motors
was the way they sounded. If you happen to like Ferraris, then you know what I’m talking about. They
have a unique “voice” coming from the motor, and it’s a sound that creates thrills in the heart of the
average car lover. Notice again: Zooming in. From car to motor to being able to see the motor... to now
the sound of the motor. And also notice that at the most zoomed in level, it’s now accounting for 50% of
the value.
I can remember when the iPhone first came out. It looked like just another phone, but then I saw
Steve Jobs doing a demo with it, and two things grabbed me by the credit card: First, it had the ability to
merge two calls that didn’t start out that way. Awesome. Then, it would scroll through a list of contacts
with just a flick of the finger, and stop if you “grabbed” the scrolling page. It was like there was gravity and
inertia inside of it. Those two features got me. So I paid the premium price to get it. Now, were those two
features really worth paying twice what ever other phone cost? No way. I hardly used them. But they
were just so cool that I had to have it.
Take a moment and consider the thing about your product or service that really triggers the “buying
behavior” in your customers. Is it possible to take out your marketing magnifying glass, and zoom in even
further, to discover a part of that part, that might even be more motivating?
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and found out what people want in a ketchup. After taking out their marketing magnifying glass and
looking at every conceivable thing you could desire in a ketchup, they discovered that there was a
“defining element” that people used to decide how good their ketchup was: THICKNESS. If the ketchup
is thick, then it’s the good stuff. Runny ketchup is the enemy of all things yummy, in the minds of most
ketchup buyers, it seems.
So what did Heinz do with this information? They built the entire brand around it. For years, they ran
television commercials (that you may have seen), featuring people holding the ketchup bottle upside
down and trying to get the ketchup to come out. They would shake it, hold it, talk to it, but nothing
worked to get the ketchup out. Most people thought this was just cute “image” advertising. But it was
actually highly sophisticated psychological strategy. They zoomed in, figured out what triggered the
“gotta have it” response in customers, then aligned their entire product and marketing strategy around it.
They’ve done this with other products, as well.
Interestingly, I just read that Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway, along with a partner, purchased the
Heinz company. Any guesses how much they paid? How about $28 Billion. With a B. I suspect that their
marketing savvy had something to do with it!
When I’m working with an entrepreneur on their marketing, I’m always looking to understand both
the emotional need that their customers have, as well as the “trigger feature” that causes a customer to
immediately want to buy the product. When I was teaching and creating a lot of marketing for my dating
advice business, I discovered a motivator that was like one of these hot buttons for men. It was
approaching a woman and starting a conversation without being rejected. It hit a deep, primal, emotional
hot button that grabbed attention and drew it to
my product. When I talked about it in my
newsletters and marketing, men bought my
products. It was (and still is) amazing.
Once you discover the emotional hot button
of your customers, it’s time to use it as the major
theme of all your branding. For FedEx (then
Federal Express), it was OVERNIGHT. For Heinz
ketchup, it was THICKNESS. What is it for your
product and your customers? And how can you
use this emotional hot-button as a brand hot
button to organize all of your marketing message
around?
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If you turn this idea “inside out” you get an interesting insight about marketing. Because it’s a lot
easier for people to understand things in human terms, you can make a very ninja marketing move by
imagining that your product or service is a person, and then asking yourself what it would say to a
customer if it could talk to them about what it does.
It’s important to make your product and message something that people can relate to, emotionally. We
don’t want to make the mistake of putting on our sterile, academic, scientific demeanor and tone when telling
customers about our product.
Talking in the tone your product would use if it was a person, telling the story of how your product or
service came to be, describing its qualities using emotional language, and explaining the “intention” of your
product - all are powerful ways to communicate about it in a way that is “native” to understand as a customer.
Humans are going to be buying it from you, and they need things put into their terms if you want them to
give you their hard-earned money in exchange for what you’re offering.
Instead of saying “this new phone has a lithium battery with 1.21 gigawatts of power” you might say “this
new phone wants to make calls all day, and you can spend up to 100 hours listening to music or 20 hours
talking on it with every charge.” Notice how I’m putting things into terms that make sense to a human,
“natively.”
I have really enjoyed looking at the creative names of these hot sauce brands as they come out. For some
reason, people who make hot sauce, in my opinion, really GET branding and naming. They intuitively create
brand names that connect on a human level.
Toad Sweat
Bee Sting
Scorned Woman
Bull Snort
Hog’s Breath
Slap Ya Mama
Ass Kickin’
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Comp R Us
A.R.K. Solvers Inc.
HCAS Technologies
Gillware Inc. Data Recovery
Techs In A Sec
Now, do any of those names touch you on a deep, emotional level and make you feel like you must
buy what they’re selling? Not exactly. They should get creative, like one of the local heating and air
conditioning companies that runs billboards in Miami, where I live. The billboards look like this:
OK, maybe that’s a little bit edgy for most businesses, but you get the point. It’s impossible to see
this billboard without having an emotional response.
If your brand name doesn’t trigger an emotional response, then it’s just more noise in the radar
system of the people looking at it.
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We learned what professional marketers do, and we learned a distinction about two different types of
branding strategies - “Defensive Branding” and “Direct Branding” - and why you should only use the
defensive form if you’re a massive company with a big budget.
We also learned to “zoom in” on the aspect of our product that really motivates our customer with
our marketing magnifying glass, then to feature it in our product, so we create an “Irresistible Egg” that
triggers buying behavior. Finally, we learned to humanize our marketing communication, so that it
touches people on an emotional level. If you can use these methods consistently in your marketing, they
will help you attract a lot more paying customers - and help you grow your business, profit and income.
Use this material to create powerful marketing and branding messages, and I’ll see you in the next lesson
and video!
-EBEN
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