The ONLY marketing framework that truly matters
Impact > Communicate > Persuade
We’re living in the age of frameworks. Everyone has a framework or at least their version of a framework.
Principles endure, formulas don’t. — Bill Bernbach
I’ve spent most of my career in marketing. Even in my current role as a PM, I do a lot of Product Marketing work since it’s a startup — and I’m grateful. Both Product Management and Product Marketing Management is full of frameworks. Be it GTM or positioning or even landing page design, there is a framework for everything.
I’ve never cared about frameworks, and when it comes to marketing — I rely on my experience (and creativity). But I’ll share a framework with you in this post coined by one of the greatest advertisers of our time — Dave Trott.
In my honest opinion, this is the only framework in marketing that matters. Dave’s work has always been inspiring, and if you’re someone curious about marketing, I’d recommend his books. Above everything else, marketing is storytelling, and Dave is probably one of the best storytellers out there!
I’ve mentioned the framework in my previous post as well, but that post was targeted at UXers. The framework, however, is applicable to everyone — professionals, businesses, SaaS companies, products, etc. Most great advertising and human interaction are based on this simple framework. I encourage you to watch this YouTube series if you’re interested.
Impact, Communicate, and Persuade
Impact:
This is simply ‘getting noticed.’ What’s your story? What sets you apart? How can you make them notice you? How can you get on their radar? Your task here is to be ‘noticeable.’
Most people, products, and businesses fail to even become ‘noticeable.’ Since they’re always following their competition, they’ll always be like their competition. There should be no Go-To-Market without impact!
This is the opposite of being ordinary. Most resumes, most ads, most packaging, and most websites just look and feel the same. Attention is the currency, and if you can’t get noticed, you’ll have no attention.
You can always get attention by passing wind loudly at a party. But it may not do much for your social standing — Rosser Reeves
As the above quote (and Benetton reference below) illustrates, you must get attention in a tasteful and on-brand way. There’s a dark side to this as well — click-bait. But then you just end here. You’ll ruin it for everyone.
The infamous Benetton advertising of some years ago falls into a similar trap. Newborn babies and a man dying of AIDS: not the first things you’d think of when it comes to selling jumpers! Yes, the advertising shocked me, it gained my attention. It was, and is, profoundly irreverent, but ultimately it leaves me feeling hollow. I just think: why? What are you saying? Do you really believe in it? — John Hegarty in Hegarty on Advertising
If you can’t get noticed, there’s no need for you to spend any marketing dollars. Don’t spend anytime on your GTM strategy or your content marketing calendar before you figure this out. There’s no marketing unless you know how to be differentiated.
Recently, I was consulting a founder who is coming up with a marketplace for UGC (User Generated Content) creators. They showed me the branding and prototypes, and it looked and felt like any other marketplace — of course because they’ve analyzed their competition so well! The design looked perfect with all the UI best practices baked in there, and that I felt was the biggest issue.
My advice was if UGC is perfect production value, it looks fake. That’s why you have people shooting with mobile phones in their kitchen instead of a studio. And why can’t we have these imperfections baked into our design? Why does it need to look like every other website?
To become ‘noticeable,’ you must be remarkable. You can’t do what everyone is doing. Along with creativity, this also requires ‘boldness.’ Unfortunately, there’s no framework for ‘boldness.’
Communicate:
Once you have their attention, communicate what you want. Point blank. If you’re an independent consultant or a business, tell them you’re looking to do business. If you’re an enterprise product, tell them you want them to book a call with your sales team. If you’re looking for beta users for your V0.18, communicate it.
The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing — Kevin Kelly
Some businesses I’ve worked with waste a lot of time in communicating why they’re superior to their competition. Someone on their team has extensively done a ‘competition landscape’ exercise, you can tell. But, this isn’t the time to do that — that’s STEP 3 in the framework.
Persuade:
“Why should they care?” You might be tempted to stuff all your product features here or the client/user testimonials, but that’s not what it is about. Why should they sign up as your beta user? Most marketers in this case come up with rational reasons — to save time or to reduce churn. While these reasons are fine, they don’t necessarily inspire.
A classic business world legend comes to mind featuring Steve Jobs. I know, but you can’t really write a marketing blog post without mentioning Apple or Steve Jobs, can you?
Steve Jobs once sought to persuade John Sculley, then the CEO of PepsiCo, to join Apple. He didn’t pitch the job to Sculley in terms of the typical CEO role but instead asked him, “Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?” Sculley chose to change the world by joining Apple.
Another example of having a larger than life vision — is here.
This is about your ‘Why’? This is more about your story or mission. This is the Simon Sinek domain now and here’s his TED talk (which I’m sure you’ve seen).
The task of marketing is a never-ending exercise in reduction. For a business, it’s about summing up the company’s purpose in one crisp statement. — Terry O’Reilly
I can’t say for everyone else, but I generally don’t buy from indie developers without an ‘about us’ page on their website. Why did you decide to make this software? Who are you? What’s the roadmap? Those are some of the things I’m looking for.
Just like product/business narratives, crafting career stories needs a bit of creativity and expertise. But keep in mind this rule of thumb, you’re trying to communicate “I was born to do this job; it is not something I choose to do.” That’s my north-star when working on career stories.
So next time you are thinking of marketing something, and it could be even marketing yourself — ask yourself how will you even get noticed first? There’s no framework for getting noticed btw :)
