How to Influence People through Marketing

When you are perfecting your marketing strategy, you need to know how your customers think and what it takes to influence them.  Human beings are stubborn creatures who are reluctant to change their perceptions.  When you market to them, you need to know what it takes to change their minds.  The best way to do this is to show them that you are someone who they can trust and has shown a genuine interest in them.

One of the best approaches to marketing is to give something of value.  This is the principle that has become a mantra for social media entrepreneurs.  Obviously, your customers will realize you aren’t displaying an act of charity.  However, a famous psychologist has shown that when you give something to someone they will feel compelled to give back.

Customers are going to respond to marketers who go out of their way for them.  They want to know that they are important and will remember someone who makes an effort to remember them.  Sometimes they even start to forget that you are trying to sell them something.

It is obviously important to build trust with your audience as well.  This has been said so many times that it has become cliché, even to the point that it has become the core message of the Geico commercials.  More specifically, in order to build trust with your audience, you need to:

• Show that others are using your product
• Be consistent with your message
• Regularly work on a reputation management strategy
• Connect with your audience on an emotional level
• Show that you deserve to be the person who sells to them by showing yourself to be an expert

Developing a strategy to promote and maintain your credibility is not that difficult.  Actually following through with it is where most marketers fall short.  You need to simply give your customers 110% of your attention.  Getting someone’s attention is a matter of give and take.  People are exposed to so many marketing messages today that they filter most of them out.  If you want them to pay attention, then you need to do more for them than your competitors.

You should also consider being more subtle with your marketing.  While the loud annoying ads we see on web pages every day may work, they are more often ignored.  Since consumers have become so good at filtering out the marketing messages that bombard them every day, you need to find a way to get around their filter.  If you can distract them with your generosity, then you can plan the message in their mind.  Hopefully, this thought will one day grow into a sale.

Many people think that a sound marketing strategy is unethical, because any strategy that actually works must be built on a base of lies.  If this was the case, there would be no place for ethical marketers in this world.  More to the point, these tactics are not manipulative at all in comparison to the lazy strategies of the marketers that focus on spam and anonymity.  You are not lying to your customers, you simply are giving them the attention they deserve.  Business is about relationships and successful marketing strategies always try to make the most out of relationships.

Kalen Smith is the founder of Engineer-a-Business, a provider of business-to-business services and informational products for developing technology businesses. Read more about Kalen here.

Kalen Smith