Having worked with many non-marketers in organization leadership teams, it has occurred to me that many things that I think are "common sense" are not so common for non-marketers. That is to say that skilled marketers are intuitive about some things that non-marketers are not. Here is my list of things that skilled marketers just know (or think about) that others may not:
- What things will create an emotional response for different types of people
- What will increase a product's impulse purchase appeal
- What simple phases and messages will cause something to go viral
- What words and phrases have the most power to cause someone to make a purchase
- How to pick the right target customers for different products or services
- Where a person is most likely go to get information about your product or service
- How to stay in front of people and build relationships
- The need to minimize the steps or barriers to purchase
- How to "close the sale"
- How to get people to "buy now"
- Developing the right angle to get publications to cover your story
- How to generate massive proactive publicity
- Where to place a product on a shelf or in a store to maximize its visibility
- How to upsell
- How to bundle or unbundle products and services to maximize sales
- How to create reference prices to increase the average price paid
- How to use price segmentation to increase revenues and profitability
- How to signal quality through pricing
- How to use exclusivity to increase demand
- The importance of location
- The importance of timing
- The importance of listening to needs
- How to plant doubt about or reposition a competitor
- How to stand out in a sea of sameness
- That "less is more" in package design and messaging
- What the visual "strike zone" is in any advertisement
- The importance of brand identity consistency
- When to be consistent and when to "mix it up" with unpredictability
- How to plant ideas in people's minds and make them think that the ideas were their own
- How to connect with anyone on a personal and emotional level
- With a few simple questions, knowing what is the primary driver in a person's life
- Related to this, knowing where in Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs a person primarily resides
So, when you think, "well, this is just common sense," it may not be. It may be something that is learned over time by skilled marketers.
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