Entangled Marketing Or How To Build Engaging Relationships With Your Consumers

I read the book “Entangled marketing” by Sebastian Jespersen and Stan Rapp and I loved it!

I believe that any brand marketer working in the era of “engagement” can benefit from this new vision of entangling the brand and the consumer in a never-ending connection. The ‘Entangled Marketing’ model is a fresh framework of going beyond engagement to establishing an enduring and mutually rewarding relationship between the brand and the customer. It’s about creating such a close relation between brands and customers that none of the part wants to let go of the other.

In our Digital Age, the way we engage customers has changed. We can do now things for our customers and prospectives that did not even seemed possible few years ago. People no longer buy products, and the book proves this idea incredible well by using the power of examples.

Let’s take the Nike’s example. We see people that are running a marathon wearing Nike shoes. Most of the runners were probably trained by Nike’s personal trainers. Nike did more than selling shoes, they became a part of the life of the sport lover. They were among the first ones to invent smart watches to improve the life of their runners. They became a part of that person’s life. That’s the new marketing!

The relation with the consumer goes beyond the transaction itself. That’s why we, marketers and business owners, need to think different. We need to think of how we can provide value for the customer outside the product.

Backstage of the Take them to the Sell Point courses

 

Hi there, it’s Lumi Mesaros. I am sure you will get used to me saying that during the 14 courses of Take them to the Sell Point. That is if you are already doing them, if you’re not, well guess what, they are here and you can actually start doing them and become more successful yay! Seriously though go click on them 🙂

I wrote a short blogpost about how it was for me to create audible content for the first time in my life. At first I was super stressed but then something clicked for me, read below to check out my journey.

Syncreate Services - Information Product Development
Take Them to the Sell Point – Course Development Experience

Having the power to create content rather than consuming it is a wonderful feeling. I realized these days that I was consuming so much social media lately that I was not thinking about creating anymore. Putting something out there and creating content is something I am truly passionate about.

It is wonderful of course to read books and spend your time watching your favourite movies but there came a time that I was aimlessly browsing through social media and hours of my life would disappear without me realizing much.

This influx of information that we get in our generation is both a blessing and a curse. What matters is how we use it, how long we use it and what can we do to improve the way we are consuming all this.

That’s why spending your time to do a course and also working with the Take them to The Sellpoint worksheets is a great investment of your time.Giving people content that will aid their growth and resources to help their dreams come true is something that I am very proud of.

I am happy that I had the opportunity to create something like this alongside my team.

At first I was a little bit worried about whether my voice will sound weird or I will sound too robotic, but what inspired me to be more natural is thinking that I am just passing on some of the knowledge that I have received and acquired throughout my experiences. 

I felt this warm, loving feeling when I was doing the courses because I imagined my audience really learning something from it. So while I was concentrated on the content, I was also putting some of my essence out there in the courses.

I advise you to do the same and put some of the unique and original YOU in whatever it is you do. In time you will get many rewards out of this and also you will get something which money cannot buy, the thought that somewhere out there you managed to inspire someone who might be in the need for inspiration.

The Art of Crafting the Perfect Offer

The lifeblood of any business, at the heart of success in any company, is the existence of a compelling and irresistible offer. It creates a way to great potential and profits and a path towards explosive business growth. Whatever you’re selling a product, service or information, the better you are at crafting the offer around it, the more likely you’ll be to succeed.

Here are five keys to building a compelling offer.

Understand the wants and needs of your customers

Find a group of people that has a want, a need, a desire, a problem, a frustration, a fear, something that’s motivating them. And then go to work to solve it.

To understand your customer you must be sure you don’t make decisions based only on your assumptions, intuition or guesses. You must go out and interact with them, meet with them, talk to them, ask them questions. You must do research, create surveys, find studies about them. Find out what’s behind their thoughts, get them to reflect on what’s driving them to buy. When you get in the mind of your customer, in their heart and understand their emotions, that’s when you can create an offer that will really speak for them.

Offer great value

You have a  great product or service and you’re using a proven sales funnel. But your product isn’t selling. So where is the problem here?

Sometimes when a product isn’t selling, the problem isn’t with the product… but with the OFFER.

What you need to understand is that your offer is different from your product.

Having a good product is important. It’s essential, but it’s not enough. A good product on its own may not sell.

Instead, you need to frame that product as part of an irresistible offer.

You need to go beyond selling a product and explore some ways to help you structure that product as a more compelling offer.

Let’s say you sell Digital Marketing Courses. This is NOT your offer. It’s just your product or service. Next you add your price of $ 2000.

Now you have a product and a price. Technically, this is an offer… but it’s not a very compelling one. You can play with the price and add more payments options, add more products and bundle into an offer (BUNDLE: Sign Up for our Course and Get Access to All Our Platform Courses for as Little as $90/Month). You can add discounts (On Sale for $1495) or bonuses.

Deliver massive amounts of value in whatever you’re offering. If you’re just putting something together expecting to turn a big profit, you might make some sales but the profit will drop consistently when your value falls short.

Remember that customers hate to be sold but they love to buy

When you think about being sold something, the idea of being pushed into a decision comes to mind. On the other hand when you think about going out and buy something, this is associated with shopping which is one of the most pleasant activity in our modern world. It means owning more which is associated with having means, power and status.

How to use this in your favor when creating an offer?

Rather than an aggressive push for sales, let the clients know that you can make their lives better. Instead of trying to sell things to customers, to convince people into buying, give them what they need so they can convince themselves to buy. Allow your customer to have the pleasure to buy from you, allow them to feel the the joy associated with having figured out the solution (your product or service) for themselves and the gratification of shopping for that item.

By giving them the fulfillment of independence and the pleasure of being a smart consumer, you will gain their trust and they will love buying from you.

Use a compelling conversion story

Customers need a way to connect to you and your business, and your story provides this connection. Why? Because humans understand experiences and information in relation to stories.

So create stories that your customers can understand, that are attractive to them and they can relate to. Something special happens when we can relate to someone. It creates the idea that you are the same, it builds connection. The more people have things in common, the more they can relate to each other. In order for your story to help your customer relate to you, include elements they have experienced personally.

Remember to speak to your ideal customer. Your customer should relate to every piece of your story and your story should touch on key emotional experiences such as being at a disadvantage, trying and failing, emotional and psychological drama, discovering winning formulas, achieving success when all the odds were against. Your conversion story should include these key elements so customers can relate to you:

  • Started in a disadvantaged situation (the same situation as your customers);
  • Tried to change your situation but failed
  • Discovering the formula to success
  • Created a system/product that works
  • Other people used it and succeeded
  • I will give you the formula

The more you include elements that your customers has experienced, the better.

Trigger action and provide a bulletproof guarantee

You want your prospects take action but not any kind of action. You want them to take a step closer towards buying your product. This means either them clicking on an add to get on your website, entering their email address to get on your list so you can follow up with them, filling out an order form or accepting your upsell, etc.

You should offer great value in exchange for their money so customers can feel good about the deal.  

In order to get customer to buy, your offer needs to include a very strong call-to-action. Tell the prospect what you want them to do. Try to make this step as simple as possible and offer clear instructions on the next steps. For example, click on the “buy now” button, enter in your details, then download the product.

If you want your offer to succeed and you want to sell on autopilot provide a bulletproof guarantee to the prospect and reverse any risk involved. This will determine your customers to take action when they believe that there’s no risk involved. The most used method is to offer 30-day guarantees of your money back on just about everything you sell.

To create a compelling offer, you have to inherently understand a few important rules. You need to know your customer, better than he does. You also need to create an offer that has a great value to your customer, use compelling stories and, of course, trigger action and take the risk out of the customer’s hand by providing guarantees.

The better you know these key elements, the more likely you are to create an offer that sizzles and is irresistible to your customer.

First steps in building a strong brand

How to begin a business that ensures the success ? Managers with lots of experience say there is no guarantee and just trying and experimenting led them to the success pathway they know walk on.

Any potential consumer needs to have a minimmum trust just to consider viewing or buying your products. Your sense of identity and trust providing is fully expressed by what you choose to express through your brand.

This is what Peter Fisk talks about in Genius Marketing when it comes to defining your brand (Fisk, 2008, p. 161). The marketing expert is all about asking the right experts. Find your answers and you will have a clear image on how to develop your business.

  1. What is your great idea?
  2. What do you do for others?
  3. Who are those people?
  4. How do you do it?
  5. What makes your product better/ and what makes a difference compared to other brands?
  6. How can you find your place among other brands to best express the idea you built your brand upon?
  7. How can you express the main idea of your brand in a clear, practical, convincing way?

The specialist goes further and shares some guidelines for defining your brand.

What I personally earned from “Genius Marketing” is a perspective on various case studies. The author brings his own experience as a consultant to help readers better understand what lies behind his methods.

In the “Virgin Atlantic Airways” case study P. Fisk shows how this company has a solid mission statement.  The company states that its role is to sustain the client and it is based on six principles defined by its founder Sir Richard Branson.

These were applied to craft the Customer Service Plan :

“1. Offering the lowest fare available

2. Notifying customers of known delays, cancellations and diversions:

3. Delivering baggage on time

4. Allowing reservations to be held or cancelled without penalty for 24 hours

5. Provide promt refunds where due

6. Assisting and enabling customers with special needs

7. Meeting customers essential needs during lenghty tarmac delays

8.  Handling Flight oversales

9. Disclosing cancellation policies and other information

10.  Notifying customers in a timely manner of changes to travel itineraries

11. Ensuring responsiveness to customer complaints

12. Minimising inconvenience resulting from flight cancellations/ misconnections

13.  The small print.”

 

 

Emotional attachement gains life-long clients

Any marketer can point out the fact that emotion is directly linked to brand engagement. But it proved to be a tough job to scientifically prove exactly how the emotional universe works related to the brands and repeated aquisitions.

In 2000 Gallup conducted a study to prove that emotions are measurable indicators in engaging brands.  The objective was to deliver a standard for future research. So the study was made based on eleven criteria. The result of the extensive study showed a pyramid of emotions that brands with the most life-long clients aspire to.

In Married to the Brand  , William J. Mc Ewen Phd (2008, p. 91) explains that the emotional attachement has four perceptual components. These are Trust, Integrity, Pride, Passion, they are equally important and they are based on the continous experience of the client related to the products and services of a company.

Trust and Integrity are the basis of building a relationship with the brand. These represent the consumer’s convictions regarding brand performance and the company’s ability to raise to the level of the brand promise, even when things are not going so well.  These first two items are also about how a company relates and talks to its clients.

The upper levels of the pyramid reflect another important element – how a company’s behavior interacts with people’s feelings.  When a consumer reaches the Pride level you can say that the brand managed to build a real long-lasting relationship with this person.

The Gallup study also gives some guidelines concerning the important factors to build this emotional attachement:

 

Emotional engagement makes a satisfied client come back for more of your products/services. Based on studies like this reminders and e-mail nurturing campaigns were created. Emotions are the same and new tools to touch the audience appear each day.

The statistics show that a 5% increase in life-long customers ratio translates in a 25% – 95% increase in profit margins. Entrepreneurs should include keeping the current audience and increasing brand attachement efforts among their development priorities.

How Travel Helped Me Learn About Marketing Done Right

Travel and marketing are two of my passions. The first one gives me inspiration me and the second one makes me tick. I love generating ideas and marketing is the best place where I get to use my imagination to the maximum level.

“So why not do both?”, I asked myself. This is how it started my first journey of capturing stories about marketing done right while traveling in a campervan across the U.S.

What I have discovered about marketing in my first Campervan Road Trip across the U.S.

The first lesson I’ve learned was about the importance of having an innovative and disruptive marketing strategy. Disruptive marketing means turning all the marketing rules upside down, shaking things up and changing the perception, from marketing campaigns to rethinking the whole brand. In a world full of advertising messages it has become harder and harder to capture people’s attention and a disruptive marketing strategy can definitely help businesses stand out.

Want an example?

While I was doing research for planning my trip, I stumbled upon a great article about a company that was converting boring white vans into works of art.  Escape Campervans covered their vans in brightly-coloured graphic patterns made by artists which aim to have a “high impact” and be “instantly identifiable”. It had the Escape spirit

Not only that made me choose their van for my trip but it made people stopping us on the road to ask about where they could rent it. This means to be disruptive!

The second discovery about marketing done right from my trip was about creating an entire experience for your customer, not only selling a product. And I have found a lot of examples to prove this idea. I have seen beaches in California that were transformed in surf cities such as Huntington Beach where the idea of surfing is present everywhere you go in shops, restaurants, parks. I have seen casino hotels in Las Vegas with different themes that deliver great experiences such as Excalibur Hotel which makes you feel like a princess living in a castle. Other examples are the campground parks that give you the ultimate outdoor experience or the Grand Canyon where you can see the great wonder of nature in so many different ways: by helicopter, Zip Lining or by walking.

Another best practice of marketing  that I’ve noticed in my trip was the use of experiential marketing. It helps in immersing the consumers within the product by engaging as many other human senses as possible. Museums and stores from Las Vegas and Los Angeles are great examples of experiential marketing. In the Coca-Cola Store you can come into contact with the world’s most iconic beverage brand in an immersive retail destination including exclusive Coca‑Cola branded merchandise, unique and entertaining experiences and true refreshment that inspires the senses. The Museum of Illusions is also using experiential marketing at its best. It’s an interactive, immersive and a fun way to spend your time. Amusing and awesome tricks will teach you about vision, perception, the human brain and science.

There are a lot of stories about marketing done right on the road. From small ideas like getting your name written on the Walk of Fame which targets the most important thing to customers — their name, to the campground parks that give you the ultimate outdoor experience. All we need to do is keep our eyes open and incorporate them in our own projects.

Tina L.

OFA Challenge Weeks at Syncreate

 

I’ve always seen challenges as a great way to learn new skills in a beautiful, engaging and creative way. Contributing every day naturally becomes a habit, and an incredibly valuable one. OFA Challenge has the same idea at heart: to help others jump on the fast track to become a marketing funnel hacker by doing every day something towards that direction.

 

The challenge was really fantastic. It had a personal touch with insights and personal stories. I felt that I had a coach to guide me and dare me every day. The questions for each mission were perfectly tailored to make me get a closer look at my fears, motivation, doubts when enrolling in a learning journey like this. And the most surprising fact was that information was structured in such a way that it made believe that everyone can learn how to build powerful marketing funnels by the end of the program.

 

Hacking my way to become a marketing funnel specialist started in a fun way. Challenge accepted.

Tina L.

How Syncreate began

Do you accept challenges?

When I chose the name Syncreate I thought about “Synergy” and “Creativity”. I used to have (especially during highschool and college) very interesting conversations with really talented people and friends I shared passions with. Probably it happened the same to you. Such talks help us grow very much and the ideas appear accompanied by a state of grace and joy.

Then I wondered WHAT WOULD MEAN TO BRING TOGETHER WONDERFUL PEOPLE, VISIONARIES, GIFTED PEOPLE, PEOPLE WHO FOUND THEIR CALLING AND GIVE THEM A PROPER ENVIRONMENT IN ORDER TO CREATE?

What would result in challenging them to find solutions to all kind of problems especially to social problems?

What would happen if THE HUMAN BEING would be on the first place in an organization? How far the limits of creativity would be pushed this way? What kind of masterpiece will they create?

This is what Syncreate means!

Each person can find themselves in this vision. I am certain that you imagined and you still do different things and different worlds where problems are cleverly solved.

Maybe other problems and questions still challenge you to find a solution…and we, at Syncreate accept challenges.

Octav D., CEO