Have you ever wondered what makes a marketing campaign stick?
Like increase-your-market-share-by-3-percent stick when even the best campaigns only achieve a handful of questionable leads?
Bland campaign performance starts with bland planning.
Most campaigns start with a brief that…
- highlights only the best reviews from the most satisfied customers,
- shows insights only from those salespeople who’ve successfully sold the product or,
- is a list of new, shiny features from the engineers who designed the product.
You easily convince yourself that shining the spotlight on the newest features (which convinced current customers to buy) is the way to convince more customers to buy.
And when that doesn’t work, you think maybe they weren’t in your target market anyway.
Wrong.
Most campaigns don’t pack a punch because they yell and scream what customers already know.
Take Coloplast, for example, a wound-care product I read about in Anthony Ulwick’s book Jobs To Be Done. (It’s one of the best books on the topic that I’ve read so far.)
Even though their value proposition was spot on, it wasn’t any different than any other competitor’s, who also promised some variation on ‘helping wounds heal faster.’
In other words, it was a bandage, and it did what you’d expect of it.
Instead of starting with the hospital management or procurement like every other brand, Ulwick and his team focused on the product’s core users: the nurses.
Early on, they figured out that ‘speed of healing’ was no longer a differentiation.
Instead, the 10 out of 15 nurses they interviewed expressed a need for a product that “made sure that the wound didn’t get worse”.
Stop repeating the same message and discover where your customers are underserved.
Ulwick learned that the most meaningful unmet need for the nurses was a product that helped avoid complications arising from the wound getting worse due to patient mistakes.
Coloplast realised that ‘preventing complications’ was the most significant unmet need that no other product had addressed. So they went out with a new marketing message that addressed that unmet need: ‘we prevent complications’.
And without changing their product or its price, they increased their market share by three percentage points.
Tell your customers what no one else is saying.
Instead of telling your customers what they already know:
- Know where your customers are underserved. (Unmet needs)
- Craft a message that promises that you can fulfil that unmet need.
- Double down on delivering on that promise better than anyone else.
As Peter Drucker said: “There is only one valid purpose of a corporation: to create a customer.”
That’s also the only purpose for every single campaign you create.
