Are You Selling Steak or Sizzle?

TweetYesterday:

Decent Product or Service + Huge Ad Budget = Success

Today:

Superior Product or Service + Outstanding Customer Service + Intelligent Web Marketing = Success

The Web Is Too Transparent To Sell Only Sizzle

In the old scenario you could hammer the “sizzle” into my head using thousands of brand images.  Repeatedly drumming me with hyperbole or rhetoric:

~ Visa – It’s everywhere you want to be.
~ Nike – Just Do It.

None of us believe that Visa is EVERYWHERE we want to be.  In fact, when this slogan was running, credit and debit cards weren’t accepted in most of the places I wanted to be.

As for Nike, what exactly are they implying with Just Do It?  If I buy these shoes, will I have a complete attitude shift, will I suddenly be able to achieve something I couldn’t before I bought them?

Nevertheless, selling the sizzle worked for decades because of the repetition of the message and the masters that created those messages.  The marketing tugged at your heartstrings.   They used images and language that deliberately connected with us on an emotional level.

People don’t buy for logical reasons. They buy for emotional reasons.
~Zig Ziglar

The “Cold Shoulder” and “Marketing-Avoidance” Technology

We all know it has long since moved past ridiculous.

There are ads crammed into even the most unsuspecting places.  At the urinal, on your grocery cart, right smack dab in the middle of a baseball game broadcast:

~ “This call to the bullpen is brought to you by AT&T. ”
~ “This pitching change is brought to you by Robinson Roofing.”
~  This bloop fly ball is brought to you by some other business that is interrupting the game.”

All selling the sizzle.

But we have evolved.  We have become remarkably adept at ignoring these messages.  One of the most important metrics that are measured with branding campaigns is called RECALL. Essentially, it amounts to whether you remember the content of the ads that you are seeing.

Traditional marketers are terrified by the numbers they are seeing.  Recall is lower than ever before and it is mostly by their own making.  The more messages that are thrust in front of us, the less we recall.  It is a simple function of our memory.  As a result, these ads have become more shocking and borderline offensive in an effort to make an impression on us.

Do you remember the name of the real estate agent that was advertising on your grocery cart this morning?  Didn’t think so.  Didn’t make an impression, did it?

The plastering of marketing messages into every nook and cranny of our lives has caused us to invent technologies that allow us to avoid marketing messages.  Tivo, iPod, Netflix, and pop-up blockers are all examples of technologies that allow us to circumvent the sizzle.

Why The Steak Better Be Good

Sites like Twitter, Facebook and Friendfeed make it very easy to query your network for referrals on products and services.  Those that have experienced your products/services and customer service will be more than willing to pipe up with the good or bad news about your organization.

The Internet is nothing, if it isn’t transparent.  Good stuff bubbles to the top and the garbage fades to the bottom.  The winners in the future will have to start their marketing efforts with their products and services.  The steak better be good.

Let Your Customers Sell The Sizzle

Today, smart companies are putting more of their money/energy into developing truly remarkable products and services.    Their customer service is outstanding.  Their products/services are so UNIQUE that they cause customers to scream the praise to their entire network.

And those networks are huge.  Networks that span the globe.  With communication tools that do it in milliseconds.

Your own satisfied customers will create the sizzle for you and it will be more authenic.  It will be in the form of a REFERRAL.  And there is nothing more powerful than referrals.

What about you?  What are you doing to improve your products and services going forward?  Are you selling the steak or the sizzle?