Estimated reading time: 2 minutes, 55 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: Own a word in the prospect’s mind
— From The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: Violate Them at Your Own Risk! by Al Ries and Jack Trout (read a sample or watch an animated video summary of the book).
In The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, Ries and Trout say that one of the most powerful concepts in marketing is to “own a word in the prospect’s mind.” Not a complicated one—on the contrary—the simpler, the better. “You ‘burn’ your way into the mind by narrowing the focus to a single word or concept.” This is the idea behind their Law No. 5: The Law of Focus.
“Federal Express put the word overnight into the minds of its prospects because it sacrificed its product line and focused on overnight package delivery only.” You too can put this law to the test by doing a simple word association exercise: what comes to mind when you hear the words “copier, chocolate bar and cola? The [three] most associated words are Xerox, Hershey’s and Coke.”
Owning a word in the prospect’s mind is so strong of a foothold, that the word becomes a generic name—and sometimes even a verb—for the category.
As examples of this, we have Kleenex for facial tissues, Chapstick for lip balm, Post-its for sticky notes, and Google for Internet search. (Here’s a fun list of generic and genericized trademarks that you can use to amuse your friends at your next cocktail party.)
Further, you can solidify your position in the prospect’s mind if you isolate the most important attribute of your product or service. Heinz owns the word ketchup, yet the most important attribute it also owns is slow (“Slowest ketchup in the West”), because it takes very long to slide out. This has generated lots of tips and tricks to be able to get this beloved condiment out of the bottle and onto our food… to the tune of 10+ million results (!) if you Google how to get ketchup out of the bottle. (Did you notice I just used Google as a verb? That’s the Law of Focus at your service.)
As an added bonus, there’s the halo effect that comes with the word you choose. “If you strongly establish one benefit, the prospect is likely to give you a lot of other benefits too. A ‘thicker’ spaghetti sauce [Prego] implies quality, nourishing ingredients, value and so on [so much so, that big brands will go to court to defend their chosen words]. A ‘safer’ car [Volvo] implies better design and engineering.”
Now that you know this, what word will you choose to apply the Law of Focus in your prospect’s mind?
ACTION
TODAY: Think of the words that represent your product or service—or even the words that represent yourself if you are looking at creating a brand for you. Start making a list. Make a second list of the attributes that go with those words. These two lists will take a bit of time to develop, as you want to get the best word to represent you.
FUTURE: Get together with some of you colleagues or friends, and brainwrite to add to the lists that you had started. Besides the dictionary, a book that can help enormously with this is Words That Sell by Rick Bayan, as well as its sequel, More Words That Sell. Then vote on the words and select the one word + attribute that will differentiate you from your competition and position you solidly in your prospect’s mind.
Know someone who needs to find the one word? Please share this post with that person via email, Facebook or Twitter, thank you!