Hey friends,
Welcome to Episode XXXIV of Market Curve - a bi-weekly newsletter exploring the intersection of marketing, writing, and persuasion.
4 questions to ask to change customer behavior
Let’s face it. As a business owner, you want your prospects to engage with your product or better yet, buy what you have to offer.
Now since their default mode is non-purchase, you ideally want to move them to the purchase end of the spectrum.
This journey starts with asking these 4 questions.
These questions will help you answer whether your prospects have a motivation to change their behavior and whether or not the new behavior is easy to adopt.
Q1: What’s in it for them? Will they be rewarded and to what extent?
Q2: What will others think of them if they undertake that behavior?
Q3: Do they have the resources, competency, and skills to do the behavior?
Q4: Does the environment allow the behavior to happen?
Answer these questions and you’re well on your way to nudge your prospects to take the action you would like them to take.
Jut please don’t use your newfound powers for evil.
By Shounak
How to come up with the big idea to convey for your product
I was reading a seminal book on advertising over the weekend called “Hey Whipple” - it’s amazing btw. As I was trying to read, re-read and commit to memory some of the ideas in there, one of them, quote effortlessly, I might add, made a home for itself in my head.
This home invasion could be in part because I had read quite a bit on this idea which Ogilvy had spoken a lot about in his writing. And now Luke Sullivan was saying somewhat the same thing but in his funny, humorous, not-giving-a-damn way:
The idea goes something like this: How to come up with a big idea to convey for your product in 5 “simple” steps:
Here is the copy-pasted version straight from the horse’s mouth:
You gather as much information on the problem as you can. You read, you underline stuff, you ask questions, you visit the factory.
You sit down and actively attack the problem.
You drop the whole thing and go do something else while your subconscious mind works on the problem.
“Eureka!”
You figure out how to implement your idea.
By Shounak (with a little help from Luke Sullivan)
Your brand is your wife
Imagine you take your wife to meet your friends for the first time. As the night goes by, you see your wife mingling with her lady friends.
So you see that as a hint up to crack open a couple of beers to share with your mates.
And in that drunken frenzy, your best buddy asks you “What do you see in her?”
And you instantly say “She’s supportive”.
You narrowed down her entire being to just one word. And that’s more than enough to convince your mate how great your wife really is.
Much like your wife “supports” you, in the same way, your product also “does” something.
Your brand is a verb.
For example, IBM solves. Apple innovates while Sony dreams.
People don’t have time to figure out what your brand stands for. It is up to you to make your brand stand for something. The way to do it is to make your brand stand for one thing.
And one thing only.
Simplicity is powerful, my friends.
By Shounak
Want me to conjure up my inner wordsmith?
…And write a killer landing page for you? That brings you users by the minute?
If that’s the case, you will be in good company at just the right time. I just finished working with a YC-backed company and shipped a total of 10 pages - phew!
Now that they have launched on PH and are making bank, why don’t you be the next in line?
I have only one client slot open right now ( I work with a finite number of clients at any given time) so why don’t you shoot your shot? Shooting your shot is free after all.
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