Marketing | PrairieSkyGroup

The Women’s Lot Narrative and the Helpmate Role.

There is a long cultural history in the US of women taking on the role of “helpmate.” George Lakoff calls the situation women face the “Women’s Lot” narrative. For a long time women could only be nurses, not doctors. However, they could help doctors. They can help in HR but not become CEO. They can help their families or their spouse. So what characteristics does a helpmate have, whether they are male or female? They work hard to serve others, often getting little credit for them selves. Any marketing narrative and message to this prospect constituency must contain these key elements.

Eight Simple Steps for Adding Gender to Your Database

Regardless of your gender, if you’re a B2B marketer and not considering it, you are missing a key element in messaging. While 90% of marketers may acknowledge that gender is important, I find only 10 percent of 1:1 marketing campaigns or databases have any data on gender. Here’s a simple deep dive technique to add gender to your database.

Metaphor 7: The Messaging Summary

Over the last set of posts, I’ve discussed the subtleties of messaging in relation to how we think and how the brain works. I have a strong conviction that most B2B messaging is still stuck in the facts and figures mode, and most companies are trying to use reason and logic alone to persuade prospects to buy their products. As a result, they are missing huge marketing and sales opportunities, especially when positioning for market growth.

Metaphor 6: The Positive Frame – The Lady or the Leopard

Recent research (O’Keefe & Jensen, 2008) indicates that the negative frame will only take you so far in influencing behavior through messaging. Their research finds that there is a slight positive effect at persuasion for messages that were positively framed. It may be simply that we prefer thinking about the beautiful lady and not the leopard, pleasant thoughts compared to dark thoughts. However, I believe framing in a positive way helps activate the dopamine circuitry in the brain that is associated with positive emotions, happiness and satisfaction.

Metaphor 4: Step Away From the Taco. Dealing With Negative Frames

I once had a competitor say to a prospect that if they bought from us, we would nickel and dime them to death. Of course this is a lousy way to sell, and I would never advocate disparaging your competition like this. But having been presented with this “negative frame” and hearing it repeatedly in the marketplace, I had to do something.

Metaphor 2: The Bark of a Tree Never Tastes Bitter to a Hungry Beaver

When we are children and are held by our parents, we feel warmth (temperature) and learn to associate warmth with affection. What happens in these two cases is that our brains do something called neural recruiting. Two neurons each holding different concepts begin to be connected. The more often that two things are associated together, the more the neurons that hold each of these two things begin to connect or wire together.

Metaphor 1: You Can’t Put a Duck Bill on a Beaver and Call It a Platypus.

One of the key building blocks of thought is the metaphor. It is also a building block in market and sales messaging. Metaphors are actually mental structures in the brain that are independent of language, but can be expressed by language to help us understand something. When we activate innate metaphors in people’s brains with language, we are then communicating with the unconscious parts of the brain and often have a greater chance at influencing thought than conscious reasoning or the use of facts and logic.

The Words We Use

Words are important. For those of you who want to do SEO, or competitive site SEO anlaysis, or just drop those irritating words from your writing and vocabulary, here’s a reminder on Word Cloud Generators.

Steve Jobs

I once got a job offer from Steve Jobs. I say this not in the “My mother petted Secretariat” sense because I hate name dropping. But his name in the news got me reflecting on our conversation and the value of doing what you are passionate about.

Marketing and Selling Using Ancient Narratives

We are our stories. It is who we are and how we think. Our brains are wired for stories and narratives. We identify with familiar stories. They evoke emotions and expectations and hope. If you want to sell something, convince someone of your position, or market your products or services, you first need to tell a story. Here’s why.

Tag Archive: Marketing