The Millionaire Fastlane (47 page)

Queen Me: Marketing and Branding

In chess, lose your queen you lose the game. In business, most entrepreneurs play the game without their captured queen.

Have you ever bought a product from television, and when you used it, it sucked and didn't perform as advertised? Then, in dissatisfaction, you tried to return it and got the runaround from a guy who sounded like he had a double-digit IQ? That is the power of marketing: bad people, bad service, and bad product, but AWESOME MARKETING. If you have an OK product (a weak knight), poor customer service (drunk bishops), and incompetent people (a castle full of idiots), you can survive with a powerful queen.

The queen is the most powerful piece in chess and it is also in business. Marketing can convince people to buy mediocre products. Marketing can hide or disguise service flaws. Marketing can shadow incompetence, and marketing can keep convicted felons disparate from their product. The power of marketing is that a powerful ad campaign can move products, regardless of the cockroaches hiding underneath. Marketing is a game of perceptions, and whatever the perception is, that's the reality.

Build a Brand, Not a Business

Businesses survive. Brands thrive.
A brand is the best defense to commoditization
. When your business is in business just to make money and pay the bills for the month, you're playing checkers and being one-dimensional. People are loyal to brands and relationships, not corporations or businesses.

I love Coke and I hate Pepsi. I'm loyal to Coke, and I don't care if Pepsi suddenly becomes one buck cheaper-I'll always buy Coke. Coke has built a brand, and the power of that brand is a firm loyalty that is difficult to sever. Is Coke objectively better than Pepsi? I don't know or care.

When you think about the automobile Volvo, what do you think of? I think safety. How about Porsche? I think speed. How about Ferrari? I think rich. Volkswagen? Practical. Toyota? Reliability. Yet, when someone mentions Chevrolet, nothing clear comes to mind other than looming bankruptcy, union squabbles, and unpredictable reliability. Some auto manufacturers have carved out strong brands, while the others fortify a business.

Our friend with the carpet-cleaning business also has a business and not a brand. Brands don't have identity crises, businesses do. If our friend wants to excel in an industry saturated with me-toos, he's going to have to brand himself and differentiate himself. He needs to be a Lamborghini in a traffic jam of Chevys. What will make his carpet cleaning business different from the rest? Why should people hire him even though his prices might be 20% higher?

These tough questions have tough answers, especially since his entry into the industry was based on a faulty premise. However, upon further investigation, most of his unscrupulous competitors use bait-and-switch advertising tactics gummed down with fine print. Perhaps this industry weakness is exploitable? My challenge to him was to leverage that nuisance. Perhaps he can brand himself as a “no-nonsense” carpet cleaner-fixed prices, no surcharges, and no fine print.

Apple, the computer maker, is a great example of building a brand based on a need, or a nuisance. People hate viruses, spyware, and the constant “Your updates are ready” messages that are associated with PC computers. Apple exploited PC's weaknesses and solved their problems. It has built itself into one of the most successful brands in history. Apple isn't the cheapest because they've engineered a brand and they can demand a higher price. Say “Apple,” and many images come to mind: creative, trendy, easy, and hip. When I think of PC, I think of blue screens, illegal operations, and “you must reboot your computer 17 times before this update takes effect.” One is a business. The other is a brand.

Get Unique: The USP

The first step at building a brand is to have a Unique Selling Proposition or a USP. As a business without one, you're adrift in a sea of me-too businesses without a rudder, unmoored to the trade winds of the marketplace. USP-less businesses offer nothing distinct, nothing unique, no benefit, no logical reason that someone should buy from them other than hope or circumstance wrapped around a cheap price.
Your USP is the anchor to your brand
. What makes your company different from the rest? What sets your business apart? What will compel a customer to use you over someone else?

My USP was powerful: No-risk advertising. If we send you nothing, you pay nothing. Advertisers joined by the truckload because they were tired of advertising with the Yellow Pages, which offered this risk proposition: “Pay us $5,000 upfront, then hope and pray.” I exposed a pain-point and fixed it. Our carpet cleaner had no USP. Nothing set him apart, as he might as well just been a lonely grain of rice in a 50-pound bag of feed.

USPs are the building blocks to brands and can compensate for higher prices or even an inferior product! FedEx was introduced to the world when it said, “When your package absolutely positively has to be there overnight.” M%M's said, “The milk chocolate melts in your mouth, not in your hand.” Notice how these USPs target benefits. I don't like Domino's Pizza (despite once being employed by them),and yet that didn't stop them from building a pizza empire based on the USP of “delivered to your door in 30 minutes or less-or it's free.” Domino's identified the need: Pizza delivery was a long ordeal. They solved it, branded it, and the rest is history. How did Domino's infiltrate such a crowded marketspace and succeed? Branding and marketing-the QUEEN in the chess game.

Developing Your USP

How do you develop a solid USP for your company? There are five simple steps.

Step 1: Uncover the Benefit(s)
Get into business for the right reason: to solve a problem or a need. That creates your first USP. If you are already in business, find the greatest benefit of your product, one that sets it apart from the competition. Do this with your customer in mind. Think about their needs and what they want.

Step 2: Be Unique
The objective of a USP is to be unique when compared to the alternatives. This impregnates the consumer with a logical argument for choosing your company, because, without your company, they are forgoing the benefit. USPs should use powerful action verbs that create desire and urgency. “Lose weight” should be changed to “Obliterate fat” or “Shred pounds.” “Grow your business” should be dropped in favor of “Explode revenues” or “Shatter sales records.”

The uniqueness of your USP creates a consumer divergence when it comes to their buying decision. If you pick a Mac over a PC, you are choosing safety, speed, and reliability over viruses and bloatware.

Step 3: Be Specific and Give Evidence
Noise is everywhere, and if you are going to rise above it, you have to alleviate natural consumer skepticism. Do so by being specific, and if possible, offer evidence.

WEB SITE:
“
Your car sold in 20 days or less or it's free.”

PRODUCT:
“
Drop 20 pounds or you don't pay a dime.”

SERVICE:
“
Your home sold in 30 days or I own it.”

Domino's Pizza didn't say “Delivered on time,” they said, “Delivered within 30 minutes or it's free.” It was a specific action and evidence of that action. (Your pizza is free if we don't perform!) In my case, the onus was on me to send my advertisers leads. If I didn't, I didn't get paid. “We send you business or you don't pay a dime.”

Step 4: Keep it Short, Clear, and Concise
The best USPs are short, clear, and powerful. Long phrases get skipped over.

Step 5: Integrate Your USP into ALL Marketing Materials
A USP is worthless if it isn't conveyed throughout every aspect of your business.

Include your USP on all your public communications:

• Your trucks, vehicles, and buildings
  
• Your advertising and promotional materials
  
• Business cards, letterheads, signs, brochures, and flyers
  
• Your Web site and your email signature
  
• Your voice mail system, receptionist/sales scripts, etc.
  

Step 6: Make It Real
A USP has to be strong enough to convince people to buy or, even better, switch brands. If it doesn't capture your audience's attention, or the benefit/hook is too weak, it won't work. And then, you have to make your USP real. You must deliver on what you say. A pizza delivered in 40 minutes makes the 30-minute guarantee a fraud. Fraudulent USPs get exposed fast and create “human resource systems” ready to rick-roll your company.

Get Noisy

Next time you're stuck in traffic, look around. Every car looks the same. Nothing commands any significant attention. It's a sea of fading exhaustive blather. Born a marketer, this is why I'm preferential to Lamborghinis. They rise above the noise, and so should your brand.

Face it. No one likes to be like everyone else. The average teenager strives not to be like everyone else, which is why we've been deluged with nipple rings, eye piercings, Goth, and tattoos-all expressions of “I'm unlike everyone else!” Successful companies take the same approach with their branding and marketing.

Writing this book, while challenging, wasn't the real challenge. Getting it into the hands of people will be the real challenge. Why? Because the topic of finance and moneymaking is crowded and saturated with me-toos. In other words, the noise is deafening. While this book is the realization of my dream, to succeed as a best-selling author I need to get my brand above the noise.

One look at my Facebook update feed and all I see is noise.

College dropout earns $2,000 in one day. Find out how! See how I make $15,000 a month with this fantastic opportunity! New startup with a forced-matrix plan guarantees you a six-figure income! I just joined this awesome affiliate program and made $300 today! Be your own boss!

I recently used an Internet calculator that tabulated my “wealth percentile,” which ranked my net worth in comparison to all of my peers in the United States. I was ranked in the top 1%. While I'm flattered, it exposes my challenge. My net worth is indicative of “unique” and “extraordinary” but in the world of perception, it's lost in the noise. On Facebook, you'd never guess that most everyone is near broke. Nope, on Facebook everyone is a multimillionaire, a success coach, a guru, or a model. Everyone is in the top 1% of his or her game, including the real top 1%. You see, we all are marketers and some of us are marketers of an illusion. What this does is creates an abundance of noise and makes it harder for the real purveyors to be heard. Your marketing efforts must rise above the noise.

How to Rise above the Noise

There are five ways to get your message above the noise:

1. Polarize
   
2. Arouse emotions
   
3. Be risqué
   
4. Encourage interaction and
   
5. Be unconventional
   

Polarize
Polarization probably isn't the best business strategy for a mass-market brand, because polarization involves extreme viewpoints or messages. You don't want to piss off half your customer base! However, polarization works fabulously for Websites in need of traffic or books in need of readers.

Polarization works because it involves an extreme viewpoint, which forces people to either love or hate you. Sarah Palin is polarizing. You either love her or want to toss her off the deck of a boat in the alligator-infested Everglades. Political pundits use polarization to sell books, because readers want to rally for a cause, or furiously refute it. Web sites that polarize attract visitors as people defend their cause while others attack it. If you're a rabid fan of the Chicago White Sox and start a Web site that viciously attacks the ineptness of the Chicago Cubs, you can expect a polarized audience-people who agree and concur and people who oppose and defend.

This book itself can be classified as polarizing. Many people will castigate my viewpoints as extreme since it goes against conventional wisdom. OMG he said the cutting coupons won't make me rich! He castigated my 401(k)! Opposition to “normal” will always be considered polarizing.

Be Risqué
Sex sells, and it is the most used get-above-the-noise technique. Sex is a powerful noise disruptor because sex never gets old. You can overuse it, but people will always respond to it, because sex is always in style. In 2005, GoDaddy aired its first Super Bowl ad by using sex as weapon to get above the noise. The now-infamous GoDaddy Girl ads followed in subsequent years. I never thought the ads were that good, yet they got above the noise and got people's attention. The result? Increased sales and GoDaddy's market share surged to 32% after 2006.

I see the risqué technique used on Facebook by social media marketers. One woman does video lectures on marketing techniques in her bikini. When she does one of these, her bikini video receives five times the viewership and comments. Why do the bikini video lectures do so much better than the normal ones? Simple: Sex gets above the noise. Men see the woman's busty chest in the video preview and think, “Oooh, I gotta check that out,” while women are curious-“OMG, who is doing a video in a bikini top?” It's almost a mix of polarization and sex.

Arouse Emotion
Most consumer buying decisions are driven by emotions. You and I buy stuff because we want to feel something. I don't buy a Lamborghini to go from point A to point B; that's practicality. I buy to feel something-pride, achievement, uniqueness, adrenaline, and fame.

Another example of using emotions to move your audience comes from the nonprofit organization the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty for Animals (
ASPCA.org
). This organization was founded over a century ago and I had never heard of it until recently. How did they break above the noise? They launched a powerful marketing campaign that unleashed emotions; their commercials featured abused animals confined in cages with a tender, heartfelt soundtrack playing in the background.