Today, more than ever before, your mind is “drowning” in marketing messages from every imaginable social media marketing source, on your phone, tablet and computer.
When your mind becomes “saturated” like it is today and cannot absorb any more information, you look for shortcuts. In other words you find ways to quickly categorize messages into favorable, neutral and unfavorable categories and quickly reject all those that don’t immediately resonate favorably.
The mind is like a dripping sponge and the only way anything new can get in is to displace what already exists. The only way this can be effectively achieved is to use connections in the mind that already exist. The most effective marketers take what already exists in the mind of the consumer and attach their messages on new products or services to these existing neural pathways.
The goal is not to try to create something new and different but rather to manipulate what’s already in the mind. In other words, to “retie” the connections that already exist in the mind.
Let’s take an example of what has worked. When you see or hear the word “beer” your mind conjures up a vision of a rich-tasting liquid served in a cold frosty glass. Miller introduced Miller Lite as – “everything you always wanted in a beer, and less”.
They took what already existed in the mind of beer drinkers about beer and introduced an engaging slight “twist” to it – less!
These days your overloaded mind doesn’t want to work hard to sort through all the messages you are perpetually being bombarded with to select one that “fits”. So you have to be creative in the selection of the right “words” that will immediately resonate with what already exists.
Words are the key to the mind. Every word has a positive, neutral, or negative connotation based upon the values that have been instilled in you since birth.
You have to find that word(s) that offers a simple point of differentiation (like less in the beer example) that sets your message apart from everything else in your mind on a specific subject. Your mind is like a gigantic ice cube tray with a cube space for all the products and services you have consciously or unconsciously placed a value on. I call it your “mental product grid”.
To effectively position your brand you have to create something new and unique about it with the right word(s). Effective marketing and positioning is about “perception”, not reality.
How effective is your brand positioning strategy?
