CONTEXT
There’s a classic saying in marketing: “Don’t sell the steak. Sell the sizzle.”
What does it mean?
People don’t buy the thing. They buy what the thing will DO for them. (Ex: You don’t buy coffee. You buy how the coffee will make you feel.)
And there is “sizzle” hidden in everything you want to sell in life.
I love this amazing 2-min video from the 1930s of Elmer Wheeler (America’s #1 sales consultant and personality builder).
He says, “The sizzle is the tang in the cheese, the crunch in the cracker, the whiff in the coffee, and the pucker in the pickle.” 😂
Here’s how to find (and sell) your sizzle:
THE METHOD
5 ingredients of every world-class brand:
1. Raving Fans: Be obsessed with your target customer to create “raving fans”— people who will “rave” to all their friends about your company.
- Talk about their deepest pain points.
- Overdeliver on solving them.
- Repeat.
2. Visual Identity: Be recognizable. People see ~5,000 ads per day. If your ads look exactly like every other ad, people won't remember your name.
- Take stock of what all of your competitors look like.
- Then design a visual identity that’s completely different.
3. Unique Sounds: Audio tend to trigger emotions better than visuals do!
- Find the perfect music for your campaigns
- Get proper licensing. (Artlist is really good at helping with this!)
4. Social Media: The best brands post consistently (and give away as much value for free as possible).
- Rather than write a new post every day, batch all of them at once and schedule them in advance.
- Get your founder or CEO to post consistently.
5. Good Stories: The most important emotion to strike in your audience is surprise + delight. How?
- Structure your point as a story
- Conflict is key for a story to stick. Use this structure:
- Normal (baseline / pain point)
- Explosion (big change)
- New Normal (adjustment/learning)
WHY IT WORKS
What people think a brand is: a logo.
What a brand actually is: raving fans, visual identity, unique sounds, social media, and good stories.
Your brand is either working for or against your business. You choose.
Btw, I recently created a handy infographic about this (which you all told me that you loved). Check out that LinkedIn post here.
Until next week,
Jade
.png)
.png)
.png)