ALL BUYERS ARE LIARS
The Stories We Tell Ourselves to Get What We Want
Whenever we buy something we want (vs. just what we need), we lie to ourselves about the reasons we need it and what it will do for us. These little stories we tell ourselves help us justify our own selfish need to get what we want…
For example, when we pay over $100 for a pair of Nike tennis shoes, we tell ourselves things like… “my friends will think I’m cool”, “everyone will be impressed by”, “I’ll be just like Michael Jordon” and other little lies that make us feel better about ourselves – and justify an otherwise unreasonable expenditure on something we really didn’t need, especially at that price – the same basic shoe that costs $20 at Wal-Mart and $3 to make in China.
In his book All Marketers Are Liars, Seth Godin examines one of my favorite marketing topics – the power of storytelling in marketing, on which I have written extensively this year.
Those who master the art of tuning in to the stories buyers are telling themselves, and then tell the right stories in their marketing, will continue to earn above average market share and results in today’s “give me what I want” world.
The premise of Godin’s book says that instead of appealing to basic “needs”, which people can typically fulfill in many different ways these days, simply by going to Amazon.com or Google and doing a quick search, we must instead look for clusters (what I’ll term “segments”) of buyers who are telling themselves a similar story already about what they want – and have similar biases and “worldviews”.
The “worldview” reflects how a buyer sees her world; i.e., the beliefs, biases, and values the buyer places on things, which directly shapes how a given marketing message and its product will be processed by that buyer. These worldviews are extremely powerful, acting as sophisticated “filters”, blocking the things we disagree with, and allowing the things we agree with to get through.
In the past, marketers learned to segment markets in a variety of ways. Segmentation based upon worldviews is a form a psychographic segmentation. Godin makes a compelling case that by properly identifying these worldviews marketers can achieve breakthrough results by crafting authentic stories that get through a buyer’s filters and then resonate within the mind of the prospect – creating the urge to buy. I agree.
When we created the original story-based marketing system, we realized just how effective storytelling is when applied to advertising and email campaigns; however, Godin’s astute observations (as usual) help us realize why some stories work better than others (and some stories do not work at all).
To be truly effective, the stories we use in our marketing and advertising must:
- Be interesting, relevant and timely
- Agree with our belief systems, in order to get past our rejection “filtering” rules
- Support the “lies” that we tell ourselves as buyers that enable us to justify getting what we want.
For example, back in the late 1990′s, my wife and I owned a couple of Thomas Kinkade Signature Galleries, which exclusively sold Thomas Kinkade limited-edition canvas paintings, along with various knick-knacks with his images on them. These “paintings” are basically inexpensive replicas (copies) of an original oil painting, reproduced in the thousands! They look great and make people feel good. So how can a replica of a painting make people feel so good?
The Thomas Kinkade brand has a large Christian following and many of the paintings convey religious symbolisms, peaceful scenes and landscapes, gardens, gazebos, etc.
The titles of the paintings are often inspirational, like “Bridge of Faith”, “End of a Perfect Day”, “Perseverance”, “Stairway to Paradise”, “Clearing Storms” and the like. We taught our sales people to tell a story associated with each painting. These stories described the artist’s inspiration for the painting, described key elements in the painting, and anchored to the buyer’s existing belief systems, values and biases; i.e., the paintings represented elements of their ideal worldviews.
In short, the paintings made you feel good because the stories were inspirational, they were painted by a deeply religious artist and they visually represented the buyer’s worldview. And by hanging them in your home you could share those same feelings and worldviews with your family and visitors, creating a great environment for all to share.
The sales people were taught that the best way to sell these paintings was to “sell the experience with a great story, and the customer takes the painting home as a souvenir“. And it worked very well! The best sales people learned to speak briefly to each customer, learn a little about that customers interests and worldview, then pull the customers into an appropriate story for each painting – the do what sales people do… qualify then close the sale.
The customers loved the stories as much (perhaps more) than the paintings themselves. And they spent many hundreds and thousands of dollars on these “limited edition” painting replicas, took them home and hung them on their walls. The stories were interesting, relevant to and consistent with the buyer’s worldview and enabled the buyer to overlook the fact that they were paying a lot of money for a replica of a painting – not an original.
The stories allowed the buyers, who were not sophisticated art collectors, to justify the price paid and get what they actually wanted - a visual representation of their ideal worldview – lies about a world that typically doesn’t exist anywhere else in their life, except as told through that painting.
Stories definitely work wonders, and not just in marketing. Human beings are “wired” to be storytellers. It’s something we’ve been doing as long as we could communicate with each other as primitive beings.
And what is “word of mouth” after all? It’s storytelling…
I highly-recommend All Marketers Are Liars. Once you’ve read it, you’ll better understand how story-based marketing works and why it works so well in today’s noisy world.
You may also want to take a closer look at how The Precision Marketing System can be applied as a proven methodology for crafting effective story-based marketing and advertising campaigns, by precisely targeting your buyers’ wants – and working with your buyer’s beliefs, biases and worldviews.
Instead of continuing to waste time and money trying to “break through” the clutter and noise by spending more and turning up the volume (which doesn’t work at all today), figure out what stories your customers (and non-customers) are already telling themselves today, then see if there’s an authentic story you can tell that maps to what they already believe and want to hear.
Finally, I find it interesting that Godin chose to focus the title of the book on Marketers instead of Buyers (which is what the book is really about). I suppose he must have thought it would resonate with his target audience – marketers. He said the title was chosen to be “edgy” and remarkable (one of his “Purple Cows”).
My first impression was that I actually disagreed with the title, so I instantly rejected the book outright (my own filters based upon my values and integrity as a person kicked in), so I originally found the title offensive enough not to read the book.
Boy. I’m glad I finally managed to get past that incorrect initial perception and read this particular book. It has changed my outlook on segmentation that works in today’s highly-competitive world, and provided me with a fresh framework for how to focus on learning more about what people want and then crafting authentic stories that tell them how our products and services will help them get it.
So, what stories have you told yourself lately to get what you want?
And what stories have you heard other people tell you lately about what they want?
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{ 2 comments }
Rick, this is great stuff. I agree that storytelling – especially in copywriting – can really help get potential customers more emotionally engaged with your marketing message. It’s certainly a skill that should be developed.
As far as the stories I tell myself… well, they’re not necessarily stories; but more like two people (logic versus emotions) arguing back and forth in a child-like manner. Usually, the noisier kid wins. LOL!
- Jay
Thanks, Jay. Yeah, I know what you mean about the inner child being the one who tells the most stories! He usually gets his way, too!!
Thanks for the comment.
Rick
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