A Few Strong Words…

In this series, we have looked at how perception affects buying habits – particularly whether or not they buy what you are selling.

There are many, many ways that you can influence this choice, and paint yourself in the best light. In this post, we’ll look at specific things that help shape that perception, and how you can harness that power.

Colour

We all realize that colour has meaning. Some are obvious: red means passion, green means envy, blue means cool and soothing. Some are not so obvious: prisons use a certain shade of pink on their walls to help calm inmates. Some meanings change over time: ten years ago, if you said “green” then someone would say “envy” back but now they are more likely to say “environment”.

Here’s a short-list of colours and their associated meanings:

Red – passion, attention, excitement
Blue – trustworthy, professional, peaceful
Yellow – happy, intelligent, “visible” (as in “grabs attention”)
Orange – bold, cheerful, adventurous
Green – harmony, soothing, flexible
Purple – regal or stately, spiritual, eclectic
White – pure, fresh, clean
Black – refined, powerful, mysterious

Of course it is not just what colours you use, but how you use them. A totally black room for example would more likely convey foreboding and evil than refined. And interestingly, orange and red in restaurants seems to say “eat up and get out” – which is exactly what the fast-food restaurants want you to do.

If you are unsure of what colours would work well with your business, take a look at the competition. McDonald’s and Burger King use similar colours to each other – reds and oranges. Coffee shops tend to used dark rich browns and creamy colours. Banks and financial institutions seem to favour blues.

Finding out what colours your competition uses might put you on the right track. Then look up what the colours mean to find out why they might be using them. Brown for coffee is obvious, but why blue for banks?

Name

The expression “a rose, by any other name, would smell just as sweet” is not true. It is scientifically proven that your name can deeply influence how people perceive you. That’s why air fresheners have names like “Country Fresh” instead of “Country Barn”. It’s also why Shaggy changed his name from Orville Richard Burrell.

Then there are names that get lost in translation: the Chevy Nova that means “will not go” in Spanish, and the Toyota MR2, which sounded out in French becomes (phonetically – and roughly at that) “emm, err, duh” or “merde”, which equals that barn smell mentioned above…

Michael McDerment has a few suggestions on how to name your company. His approach is a little basic, but his reasoning is sound.

I think you can treat names like colours. If you are operating a bank, solid “blue” names like Morgan and Chase are good. If you are aiming your business at kids, then “orange” names like Chuck E. Cheese and Hannah Montana fit the bill.

No matter what your business, come up with a few names that you like and shop them around your friends and family to find out which will help people’s perception of you most.

Font

This is a small but important consideration. The font choice you use in your logo and banners will have a huge impact on your business.

I’m not going to reinvent the wheel here: Kelly Erickson already had a great take on this subject.

I will add this though: try to look at the fonts you use like colours again. The “blue” IBM logo. The “red” Chili’s logo (which actually is red, and uses an image rather than words – how fun is that?).

In my own case, I used a hand-writing script for my name, trying to convey “artistic” and “creative” with a straight font for the “Freelance Writer” sub-name, conveying professionalism and reliability (you can let me know if I missed the mark by leaving a comment below…!)

Style

Style is very difficult to tackle. It covers many different aspects of your business, from the way you use colour to your content, your customer service, your storefront, your website layout, and more.

My last name is not Gucci, so I am not going to go too far down this road. But I will say this: I did try to consciously put together a basic style for my own website using all of the points including the blue colours to represent professionalism and reliability, the fonts as mentioned above to convey both professionalism and creativity, and the simple layout to represent “easy to work with”. The image I chose of the piled rocks also represents all of these attributes (I believe) as well as give a calming image – to represent that I’m in control and can take the stress off my clients’ shoulders.

Once you get into things like Gucci and Ferrari where style is their business, you need to have a very sophisticated palette. But for the average business, the most important thing is consistency. Again, I’ll compare it to colours: match your style so that everything works together to give the perception you want to convey.

And get rid of colours that clash. Your jewellry shop can be bathed in regal purple, well-lit, and have the most smudge-free display cases. But put up a poster with a snowboarder on it, and you will negate everything.

The “Easy” Way to Do All This

These are just a few basic ways to help influence other people’s perception of you. There are countless more. But if you start by identifying your keywords (as discussed in the last entry in this series) and choose colours, fonts, names, and style to reflect these, you’ll at least be going in the right direction.

It’s important to have a strong sense of self, but often you can save yourself a lot of anxiety and trouble by getting someone else to create your visual identity. A graphic designer understands how colour, fonts, and other design elements work to convey your image. An experience designer can help your storefront business (and perhaps even online business) create a better customer experience using these techniques and more. Find one you trust and who seems to have the same style sensibilities that you want to reflect in your own business.

In the next installment in this series, I will do a case study on a company that does it (mostly) right: Apple.

Until then, chime in with your comments! Am I right? Am I wrong? Am I blue? Let me know…

~Graham

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In Part I of this series, we discussed how perception can affect buying habits. In Part II, we saw specifically how this works. You don’t want to buy a Ferrari in a dirty back alley for example. The environment and the way you do business needs to reflect the product or service you are selling.

As you may know, it is easy to look objectively at someone else’s decisions and judge their effectiveness. Yes, Italian marble fountains in the showroom and oak desks mean prestige, trust, and Ferraris.

But what represents your product or service?

For Starters…

It is important to realize that every aspect of your business influences perception. The way you dress for a business meeting, the design of your website, the look of your business card, the colour of the drapes in your office, the way you recycle. Even things like the car you drive or the places where you eat.

For some of us, like the work-from-home freelancer, we aren’t likely to be “seen” at any particular restaurant. But imagine what perception customers would have if they saw Ronald McDonald standing in line at Wendy’s for a lunchtime burger…

So for starters, consider every aspect of what your customers/clients see of you, including:

• Logo
• Tag lines and slogans
• Business cards
• Website and/or blog
• Advertising (print ads, banners, Google Adwords, etc.)
• Phone message recordings
• Brochures and other marketing materials
• Store front
• The way you dress and groom yourself for direct contact with customers/clients

Develop your own list, and consider every point. Also try to keep an objective eye here, if at all possible. What would you think if you saw all these separately? What would you think looking at all of these together?

In short, what perception do you have of yourself based only on these items?

Chances are, there is room for improvement. Even companies like Microsoft and GM must constantly work on customer perception. Decide:

1. How you want customers/clients to perceive your business.
2. How you can achieve it.

What Are Your Keywords?

Deciding how you want customers to perceive you can be deceptively complicated. It is no secret that even the best marketers out there freeze up when they try to decide how to market themselves.

So crafting customer perception is no small thing. It helps though to start with the basics. Jot down in one sentence exactly what your company does. Think in terms of benefits, not features. For example, if you sell WordPress plugins, then your sentence won’t be “sell WordPress plugins”, it would be “make it easier for people to use WordPress”.

See the difference? Not only is the second more colourful and descriptive, but it focuses what your core business really is (i.e. helping people, not just selling products).

If you feel it is important, add a couple more sentences to describe the nuances of your business. But don’t write an essay. Boil it down as much as possible until you have the essence of your business.

Now we boil it down even further. Create a list of keywords based on this sentence, just as you might a blog post or an SEO web page. If you are a florist, some obvious keywords would be “flower”, “arrangements”, “gift ideas”. But what about words like “fun”, and “happy”, and “celebration”? These are even better because they deal with emotions, not objects or ideas.

And we all know from Marketing 101 that connecting emotionally with your customers will make all the difference.

One More Easy Tip

If you want an objective assessment on how your customers perceive you, why don’t you ask them?

Recently, James at Men With Pens asked their readers what people thought of the look of their blog, and what they could do to make it better. That post and the comments opened a whole can of worms. Many people chimed in with suggestions for a website redesign.

But what I think surprised James was the fact that different readers saw different things. Everyone knew them as bloggers, and many knew that Men With Pens was a business name as well, but few knew exactly all the services they offered. (In fact, this is the case for many bloggers — I found out recently that few readers know exactly what I do as well!)

Just by asking for customer feedback, you can find out exactly how some of them perceive you right now. You can do this by emailing them for a quick impression of your website, sending a “How Are We Doing?” survey, or if you have a blog, simply asking them like James did. However, I would recommend making it as easy for your clients to respond as possible. You don’t want them to start thinking that they are now working for you!

Armed with this new-found information, you can decide what holes are in your customers’ perceptions, what you need to stress better, and what you should fix. We’ll discuss this next in Part IV of the series.

Until then, have any tips for discovering customer perception? Let us know by leaving a comment below!

~Graham

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“Lipstick on a pig.” This seems to be a new catch phrase in US political circles. It means “dressing up an idea to make it look like it is more than it is” or “we’re scared of your VP choice, so we are going to take subtle pot shots at her to make her seem less than she is”.

I think it is an important term in marketing circles too. In this case, it could be seen as “over-marketing”, which can be a problem when you are accurately trying to describe a product or service. It can also be legally troubling…

I see it in my own writing all the time, and it is something I constantly have to keep in check. My job in most cases is to present my clients’ companies in the best light. That means touting successes, underlining benefits, and overall trying to show why one company is better than its competitors. (You know, in case you don’t know what marketing is about… lol)

My point is that often I can be guilty of putting lipstick on a pig. What I have to remember is (a) pigs are very attractive creatures in their own right and (b) pigs don’t wear lipstick.

For example, pigs are very clean, and many people love to keep them as pets. And to paraphrase Homer (Simpson, not the great Greek writer), they are the wonderful, magical animal that brings us bacon, pork chops, and ham.

These are the features we need to sell, if we are selling pigs. If we try to put them on the same playing field as say a Bentley, not only are we misrepresenting ourselves but we are doing a disservice to our clients. Customers will quickly see that although pigs may be more fuel efficient, the luxurious ride and “wow” factor just aren’t there, no matter how much lipstick you use. Worse, it hog-ties future marketing efforts for that company because customers will not forgive it for trying to put one over on them.

It all comes down to one thing: honesty. Yes, put your client in the best light but don’t stretch the truth. In fact you may even benefit from erring on this side of the truth. There is a lot to be said for promising a little and delivering more.

What do you think? Can you put a little bit of lipstick on a pig? Or is it best not to “ham it up” at all? Enquiring minds want to know — leave your comment below!

~Graham

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There are a lot of powerful marketing words out there. You have likely read articles and blog posts about using words like “free” and “secret” in your headlines, as well as other irresistible phrases to snare your readers.

The problem with many of these words though is that once you set the hook, you still have to reel them in. Wouldn’t it be nice if you had a word that made your readers just jump into your boat?

Actually there is, and I’ve already used this word and its kissing cousin nine times in this post, including the title. That magic word is “you”.

Carnegie said it best: “Talk in the terms of the other man’s interest.”

Of course, today he would write “other person’s interest” (or at least his editor would…) The moment you hear or read the word “you”, you immediately prick up your ears because suddenly the conversation is on a topic that is a source of endless fascination. If I talk about you all day, I’ll likely have a captive audience.

One thing I noticed about myself though is that I can write a few pages of web content or some brochure copy, and consciously use the word “you” throughout. But as soon as I’m done, for some reason I just let it go. The rest of the day, it’s suddenly all about me for some reason.

Well, I think it’s time for me to change my errant ways (and perhaps you do too). So let’s talk about some ways that I can talk more about you.

Emails

I try to make a conscious effort to use the word “you” more often in my emails:

“Here is the article I wrote for you.”

“Great talking with you today.”

“I knew that this link would interest you so I forwarded it to you right away!”

Most of the time, the sentence would make perfect sense without adding you, but I think it adds that personal touch without making it too wordy.

Blogs

You are here for you, not me, n’est pas? So injecting more you into my blog posts would just make sense. For example, which blog post title do you find more inviting:

How to Make More Money Blogging

How You Can Make More Money Blogging

The second version subtly but definitely makes a stronger impact. Although the first title may be intriguing, it is not exclusive. The second version is all about you, which by default cranks up the intrigue factor. After all, not just anyone can make more money blogging, just you.

Phone Calls

“How are you today?”

“Yes, you are right!”

“Certainly I can do that for you!”

Using “you” is not limited to writing. You can make everyday conversation more intriguing by sprinkling a few “yous” in there.

When You Becomes Me

Of course the whole purpose of using “you” is to make friends and influence people. (And BTW, if you haven’t read the book — get it now!) The more you focus on other people, strangely the more they start to focus on you. And isn’t that what marketing is all about in its essence?

So make it all about you (by which I mean of course, make it all about me, not you) by making it all about you (by which I mean of course, make it all about them, not you).

Okay, that’s getting a little confusing and Pythonesque, but you get my point…

Any other ways I can make it more about you? You just let me know — leave a comment!

~Graham

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