The Secret of Why Only Some Marketing Programs Succeed And Most Others Fail

When you come from "How can I help him or her make a better, easier decision?" you gain a perspective that eliminates waste and makes marketing much more predictable, controllable and effective.

TDS is at the root of all successful marketing methods

Total Decision Support explains why virtually everything in marketing that is widely known to work, actually works. Think about it: Why do the following strategic and tactical marketing breakthroughs work? What’s the magic ingredient common to all?

Unique Selling Proposition, Positioning, finding a need and filling it, Needs/Benefits Selling, guarantees, Word of Mouth Marketing, targeted marketing, sampling, 800 numbers, catalogues, home shopping, customer support numbers.

Stop reading and think about it. Are you ready for the answer? Each, in its own way, makes decision making easier for the customer. Easier to get information, easier to understand it, easier to evaluate it, easier to verify it, easier to order the product. More importantly, Total Decision Support (TDS) lets you integrate all of these elements — and many more — into the most powerful mix possible, with every element supporting, rather than conflicting with, each other.

Are YOU supporting your customers’ decisions?

Are you coming at things from the perspective of “what do my customers really need to make a positive and continuing decision about my product, and how can I make it easy?” Are you providing: A clear statement of advantage to the customer, up front, in the headline, opening statement, etc; an implied promise that if he goes through your marketing material — whether it’s the back of your package, your ad, your salesperson’s story, your letter, etc. — he will learn something of use. Is there a compelling reason, case, argument? A logical and emotional appeal? Something which awakens a desire? A proof statement, source, etc.? A way to verify claims? A call to action? A reason to act now? A guarantee? Easy access to information? Easy ways to check out the information? These are only some of the things that will make your marketing more effective if you only come from the Total Decision Support perspective.

I guarantee you, your marketing program has built-in obstacles, gaps and traps that make the customer have to work more than he should have to in order to buy and continue to use your product. Most sales are made despite these barriers. Eliminating them, and substituting genuinely helpful elements will dramatically increase your sales.

Why most marketing is ineffective

TDS also explains why conventional marketing is becoming increasingly ineffective: advertising, sales people and other conventional approaches — conventionally applied — are losing their effectiveness. Why? Because they are adding to the noise of the marketplace, not helping the customer cut through it.

Total Decision Support cuts through the noise. The marketplace is filled with intrusive, slick, glitzy approaches, all competing for people’s attention amid the clutter. Total Decision Support is not based on advertising cleverness, which we all know is reaching diminishing returns. It is not based on pushing products, nor on manipulating the customer. It is based on a respect for the individual’s intelligence, and the difficulty he has in sorting out the increasing options in the marketplace. It is a win-win situation in which your product can flourish. It breaks through the clutter because people have a built-in radar system to notice things which are genuinely useful. You are busy and besieged, yet you’re reading this, aren’t you?

How to Implement
Total Decision Support

What could be simpler? Just match your persuasion process to the customer’s decision process.

Support the customer’s total decision; and support the decisions totally. “Supporting the customer’s total decisions” means to encourage total commitment to the fullest possible appropriate use of the product. “Supporting the decisions totally” means helping the customer at every one of the necessary decision steps.

It’s done by a process that I call Decisioneering™. Decisioneering is designing your persuasion system around the decision needs of your customers. But how do you know what their decision needs are? Fortunately, I’ve done a lot of the homework for you. In the course of designing and conducting more than five thousand focus groups and customer product seminars in a 24+ year period, I have amassed a formidable amount of information about how people make decisions about products and services. I’ve identified what accelerates the process, and what makes people flounder. I’ve mapped it out in a flowchart that I call the Decision Map. Not only does it lay out the necessary steps and stages that people have to go through to get to full adoption of your product, but it also lays out the best media and messages to get people through the steps efficiently.

First, get the Decision Map (call [1-800-Tel-Meet] or fax [914 365-0122] our office to order it for $15). Then, lay out your entire marketing program (ads, sales presentations, sales aids, brochures, direct mail, demos, trade shows, PR, customer education, support, etc.) on the Decision Map. This will let you zero in on areas of overconcentration, gaps, inconsistencies and confusions — as well as what is working. It will help you identify the many obstructions that you have unwittingly built into your marketing, as well as many opportunities for accelerating the decision process.

Then, you may have to do a series of individual depth interviews or focus groups to get at the deeper values and other motivators of your customers, prospects and rejectors. We usually find that this is necessary because companies are often marketing to rationalizations (the reasons people make up in order to justify why they are buying, stalling or rejecting) rather than to essential values. Concentrate on and develop: the promise that will get people to invest the time, trouble and other resources to engage in the decision process; how they will find out about the competitive alternatives; how they will try or test the product; what criteria they will use for its evaluation; how they will go from trial to adoption; how they will monitor its use; and what will keep them satisfied with continued use of the product. Then figure out how and when to intervene in and change the process to make it easier.

As you develop decision supportive marketing, pay particular attention to developing your Unique Selling Proposition. As everyone knows but few implement, you need a Unique Selling Proposition (USP), a reason that someone should even look seriously at, much less use your product. It answers, from the customer’s perspective, the questions, “What’s uniquely in it for me?,” and “What does this product offer that would make me change from what I am doing now, that I can’t get anywhere else?” Total Decision Support helps you develop the USP because it focuses you on what really excites the customer, not what you like about your product. It re-focuses you away from bragging toward serving.

Then, develop a compelling argument in support of the USP. Not one that you find compelling, but one that customers find compelling. Unlike the simplistic desire of most advertising agencies to come up with a single slogan, or a set of buzzwords or hot buttons that will make everyone buy the product, you may need several different compelling arguments for different types of customers, some primarily logical, some primarily emotional, depending on the decision manner and style of the customer. A compelling argument may be very simple or extremely complex, depending on the complexity of the decision. In the case of a new medication, it may be as simple as a compelling picture of a sick child, or a compelling, but complex, financial analysis in a hospital formulary committee monograph.

The best way that I have found to do it

I often conduct Persuasion Development LaboratoriesTM to get at the USP and compelling case: I conduct a couple of focus groups of ecstatic customers, alternated with a couple of groups of prospects who did not buy (or low users). I present the most compelling case developed from the customers to the non- or low-users. I get to the next level of qualms, which I then present to another group of ecstatic customers.  I present these customers’ answers to another group of low/non users. I may have to go back and forth several times, building the compelling case(s), conclusive arguments and decisive clinchers from both the input of the groups and a creative collaboration between my clients, their agencies, my staff and myself. I then conduct mixed groups of customers and prospects, in which the customers sell the prospects, carefully guided by what I have learned in the previous groups and what we have developed as a result.

I have found that this painstaking, thorough, systematic approach lets me map out the decision process and determine exactly what will get people excited about the product, the sequence of presentation, the examples that have to be used, the sources that people need it from, the things that will make them flounder, and what will accelerate the decision process. Sure, you can try to develop your persuasion approach on a hit-or-miss basis out in the marketplace, but it can be a long and costly process before you stumble across the right approach. The process that I just described, which I call Persuasion Laboratories, allows you to develop — in a safe place (a laboratory) on a fast cycle — exactly what will make the decision so easy that it becomes an effortless pleasure to engage in the decision process about your product, and an effort to find out about your competitors’ products.

Put it into a package

After identifying your USP, and developing the compelling arguments, organize your marketing program into an integrated decision assistance package in which you give people what they need (not only information, but verification and confirmation), when they need it, in the form they need it, from the sources they need it, in the sequence and pace they need it. Integrate your marketing materials into a decision assistance system in which you know that every element is contributing to the customer’s decision process, helping him along to the next step. Depending upon the kind of product, this may be as small as an ad, or as large as a multi-faceted campaign involving advertising, salespeople, PR, trade shows, seminars, and other events.

This approach means, among other things, that you pick the media and messages according to the flow and structure of the customer’s decision process, not according to past tradition, or according to the “creative” whims of an ad agency. Each of the media has different functions and capabilities. They each differ in credibility, controllability, reach, frequency and cost. The only standard should be, “does it cost-effectively support and further the customer’s ability to make the best and easiest decision?” Advertising awards are irrelevant to marketing results. In fact, sometimes advertising itself is irrelevant. You have to completely re-think the use of advertising, sales people, PR, events, promotions, etc., in the light of the source from which the customer needs the information and confirmation and how they fit into the decision process.

This also means that you apply the same standards of quality to the products of marketing as you apply to the products of manufacturing: zero defects, every element fulfilling its purpose, every component doing its job — in this case helping the person along to the next step of his decision process.

The purpose and process of marketing research changes completely

This also means a completely new approach to marketing research. Marketing research should probably be renamed decision research. It is not important to find out only about people’s knowledge, attitudes, practices, values, beliefs, opinions, emotions, and motivations. Most marketing research falls short because it stops there. That’s only a start. What is important is to figure out how these fit into the decision process, and how the process can be made easier for the customer. This is a view of the marketing researcher as less of an investigative scientist and more of a proactive decision engineer (decisioneer), designing an integrated system that is genuinely helpful to people in making the right decision.

You need to motivate them to decide

Let’s not forget that it is increasingly difficult to motivate people to make decisions in today’s complex environment. This means that we not only have to motivate people to buy our product, we have to motivate them to be willing to go through the decision process at all. We must support the front end of the decision process. If someone thinks that the process will be aversive, or unproductive, or more work than they are willing to put in, they will not engage in it. Like most other aspects of marketing, you are guilty until proven innocent. People assume that your materials will be like everyone else’s: boring, glitzy, full of hype, intended to mislead, full of omissions, and a whole lot of time-consuming work to get through and evaluate. You must imply that the process will be easy and fun. Look at your materials. Are they easy and fun? It also means saving people from the work of finding experts who will verify the claims. Are you providing credible verification of your claims, proof sources and third party endorsements? It also means facilitating word of mouth. Do you have a program to increase word of mouth? There are many ways to do it at very low cost, that can double the sales of many products. It means laying things out in a way where people can easily navigate a variety of materials, in a variety of forms, to get the information, verification and confirmation they need, from a variety of sources, in the style, sequence and at the pace they need it. Is your marketing system, the mix of the marketing elements, accessible in a flexible manner, from the point of view of your customers? Are you doing any of these things? If you answered yes to even one of the above questions, you are in a very small minority. Your competition is not doing these things either, so you can get the edge.

Let’s also not forget that people want to buy things. But they don’t want to be pushed or pulled. They don’t want their time wasted. They don’t want information overload. They want guidance about what is important. They don’t want to have to sort through what is true from false, the relevant from the red herrings, the complete truth from the omissions, the exaggerations from the accuracies. They want to be assisted. But they want genuine assistance, not manipulation masquerading as help. And, like you, they are quick to spot the hype and quick to spot genuine support.

Don’t forget the continuing decisions

Let’s not neglect the back end either. So far, it may sound like Total Decision Support is only about the initial decisions that go into adopting the product. But I’m also talking about the continuing decisions to keep buying, using, prescribing and recommending the product or service. You need to constantly remind them of the value of your products and what you have done — or can do — for them lately. You must provide technical support, applications support, any support they need to continue to love to use your product. Provide seminars, application notes, expert input, anything else that will help them use your product more effectively. It’s not up to them to learn how to use your product better; it’s up to you to teach them. Keep them more than satisfied. Keep them happy, ecstatic, thrilled and delighted. Make them rave.

Inferior, parity or superior product

Total Decision Support is an important perspective whether you have an inferior, parity or superior product in your class. If you have the inferior product, look at what improvements in product design, service, customer support, etc. you have to make in order for your product to be the easy decision for some segment of the market, and how to support that decision. If your product is a parity product, think again. There are no parity products! Look at where you can develop a unique edge, so that a favorable decision can be made easily. If you have a superior product, especially one that has not reached the sales you think it deserves, Total Decision Support is also your answer because it will find where your product is stuck and remove the obstacles. In all three situations, your problem is probably that you are not matching your persuasion process to the customer’s decision process.

So, I leave it to you. I am sure that Total Decision Support is the most powerful marketing idea to come along in several decades. If you agree, I urge you to use it. Review your materials from this new perspective. Ask yourself if you would make a favorable decision about your product, based on your marketing package, if you were the customer. Would you even put in the work to read it, or listen? You’ll see dozens of missed bets in your marketing through the lens of Total Decision Support. If you don’t see them, send me the material, and I’ll call you back with some suggestions, free of charge.

In any event, let me know how this approach works for you.