Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Emotions!


When you talk about emotions to an engineer, you are treading on thin ice.  There is nothing they hate more than to hear about your emotions.  It is like throwing water on the witch.  However, marketers know that the most effective sales method is one that appeals to both logic and emotion.  You can convince someone that your product is the right choice, but an little emotional push will move them to make the purchase.


The problem is, "using emotions to sell a product" sounds manipulate to an engineer.  They want to give their customer all the facts so they can make a logical decision. This would make sense, given the logical nature of engineers, however, any good marketing person knows how to sell his/her product to his/her customer.  When left to pure logic, there is a lack of a sense of urgency to take action and the danger of "analysis paralysis."


Let's remove the word "emotion" and substitute "motivation."  How do we motivate the engineering customer to stop analyzing and to select our product without extensive research?  To do this, we need to determine what motivates them. About what are they passionate?

James Snider is a Global Marketing professional, responsible for developing the 3.4 billion dollar 1394/FireWire market. James spent 16 years in marketing with 7 years working at "for profit" companies, 8 years as executive director of a non-profit and the past year as an independent global business development consultant.  www.linkedin.com/in/jamessnider

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Digital Tonto


If you are not reading Greg Satell‘s (Digital Tonto) blog, you are missing some of the best marketing content on the internet.  He is always interesting and informative….and he always makes me wonder how I have gotten this far in life and know so little.  Here is an excerpt from his most recent blog posting:
From “Marketing Memes”
Two Hunters
Memes can spread in lots of different ways for lots of different reasons.  Susan Blackmore, in her book The Meme Machine, describes how altruism can spread memes through a story about two successful primitive hunters, Kev and Gav.  Kev, is a nice guy who shares his meat while Gav is a bit more selfish and keeps the proceeds from his hunt to himself.
Blackmore notes that Kev will come into contact with more people and they will be more likely to copy his style of hunting  (i.e. type of bow and quiver, etc.).   Moreover, other memes of his will be transferred as well, such as the type of feathers he adorns himself with, songs he likes to sing, etc..
Gav’s memes won’t be as successful.  He won’t spend as much time with others so, whatever his merits, he won’t get copied as much as Kev.  As information gets passed down, future generations will be more likely to adopt Kev’s memes than Gav’s.
Greg then goes on to compare Google, Microsoft, and Apple to Kev and Gav and to discuss how ideas spread.
For the complete post (and all his other excellent articles) go to www.digitaltonto.com

James Snider is a Global Marketing professional, responsible for developing the 3.4 billion dollar 1394/FireWire market. James spent 16 years in marketing with 7 years working at "for profit" companies, 8 years as executive director of a non-profit and the past year as an independent global business development consultant.  www.linkedin.com/in/jamessnider