If you sell or do something weird, or something that entails an awful lot of "information training" for potential customers, something that is very "niche" and little known to the general public, or something simply new that hasn't had time to penetrate to the major markets as yet, you can sometimes feel that marketing is a real uphill battle. I've certainly felt that way for many years but I've just started on a new campaign which I call "presupposition marketing". In brief, I'm going to pre-suppose that the audience already knows what I'm talking about, even though I know they have no idea! What that does is to engage interest and the "oops, why don't I know this ..." factor, which is a strong social motivator to find out more. Let's say we were trying to market a new product called Shan Zin Wah. Most people will write articles such as, "What is Shan Zin Wah?", "An Introduction to Shan Zin Wah", "How Shan Zin Wah Can Help You Lose Weight", "10 Good Reasons To Buy Shan Zin Wah" and so forth in order to try and educate the customer. That's fine and I'm not suggesting to stop writing those sort of articles; but it adds depth and a whole new range of topics you can write about when you simply pre-suppose that EVERYBODY already knows what Shan Zin Wah is, how good it is, how cool, and then go from THERE. This opens up untold possibilities for intriguing Shan Zin Wah articles, such as: "Beware of imitation Shan Zin Wah! Shan Zin Wah scams exposed!" "The three biggest mistakes Shan Zin Wah users make every day ..." "Three Top Shan Zin Wah Tips for Experts Only!" "Shan Zin Wah - Has It Stood The Test Of Time?" "Shan Zin Wah VS Rock Salt - Who Will Win?" As you read this, and read the five examples above again, something interesting happens - the presupposition that we are dealing with an established, well known product of some kind - and you're the ONLY ONE WHO HAS MISSED OUT KNOWING ABOUT IT! It's intriguing, it's interesting - and neurologically speaking, the whole concept of "Shan Zin Wah" gets filed with a completely different type of product than something that is being introduced as new, untried, untested, or that a person has to labouriously learn about first. So and to sum up, what you do with your product or service is as follows. Imagine that it is as well known as Coca Cola, Persil, Paris Hilton or Virgin MegaStores. Now think of a range of articles that would be written if that was the case, and write them from that vantage point, to an informed, already convinced and aware audience, to give these people some EXTRA and INTERESTING further and background information about the product/service. This is a really interesting and effective use of the NLP concept of "persuading by pre-supposition" and makes article writing into a much more fascinating challenge again, especially with a new or usually considered to be "niche" product. |
