Spots for Tradestation and Forex.com made Futures Magazine’s list of the very best of television advertising targeting traders and brokerage customers. Being included on a list along with such huge-budget classics as The E-Trade Baby and other eight-figure advertisers is a proud achievement that we’re delighted to be able to share with these extraordinary clients.
Marketing to traders is a wonderful microcosm of marketing and advertising, where psychology meets economic decision-making at superhighway speeds. We loved working with the team at Forex.com to build the brand and business, and we’re loving every minute of working with the truly extraordinary people at Tradestation on building the strongest and most substantive brand in trading.
Here’s what Future’s Magazine has to say…
Over the last couple decades, trading has gone from a select few traders in Chicago and New York to being accessible to nearly everyone. With accessibility comes advertising. To get noticed by the general public, brokers’ marketing departments are finding more and more creative ways of catching the public’s eye. Read the full article here.
http://youtu.be/YIzj8rNYf04
When it comes to technology, flash and pizazz are not everything. TradeStation makes a nice contrast here explaining what it actually offers customers. By focusing on what actually is important (execution), it highlights just how ridiculous some marketing claims actually are.
This woman knows exactly what she wants, and not just from her trading brokerage. Of course, knowing who can give you what you’re looking for is the real challenge. Watch this one all the way through and you’ll understand what we’re talking about.
It seems like a simple enough truth. It doesn’t take that many Venn diagrams to reach this conclusion. But it’s easy to slip into the pattern of viewing clients as just forces in nature that must be overcome, instead of seeing them for what they really are – human beings who happen to be paying us to solve a some of their problems.
Every time I remember to see clients in the latter light, it makes for a more real conversation and a more successful meeting. And every time I find myself in the former frame of mind, it proves to be a trap. Staying mindful of anything 100% of the time is an impossibly tall order, but over the years I’ve found two little exercises that help me with this one.
1. Think about yourself as a client.
I don’t have to remember that many edit sessions to pull up a time or two when I was, for the editor, a difficult client. Maybe I asked for more options but then came back around to the first one because I needed more context to be sold. Maybe I said something that clouded an issue because I was talking at the end of a long day when I should have been shutting up and going home. Or maybe I said one thing, then got more information or context or time to mull it over, and then, shockingly, changed my mind. Now I’m not saying we shouldn’t try to have reasonable standards for our clients. We should. As should all of the editors I’ve tortured over the years. But that “reasonable standard” has to allow for the flaws that come with being human.
2. Try to understand how hard their job is.
Everyone’s job looks easier from a distance. Clients don’t always realize how much work something requires on the agency side. And the reverse is also true. But even clients have clients – other people in their organizations that they have to answer to. And as much pressure as we feel (rightfully) to show results, they feel it even more acutely and directly. Often, to be the decision maker on the client side is to stake your job on every campaign, or at least a large portion of your credibility. That’s an incredible amount of pressure. And it explains why sometimes decisions take longer than we think they should, or why feedback is sometimes less than crystal clear. It’s our job to help them work through those things – and we’ll be better at it if we also make it our job to do a very simple, very human thing: empathize.
Are you a student of advertising? Do you absolutely love it? Are you soaking up all the cases, reading all the sites? Are you doing this so much that you leave little time and focus for your own work? This is a challenge many of us face – how to make time to keep up with all the incredible content that can help us do our jobs better, while making the time to focus on doing our jobs, on creating our work.
I have struggled with this as much as anyone. A creative person wants to know everything. Because what we do is create new and unexpected connections from within our broad range of disparate ideas and knowledge. We are always curious. Yet too much feeding at the troth of content and too little digestion can lead us to add very little value. We need our time to work. We need our time to add value to the material we have assimilated. We need our focus!
You can’t do it without a plan. Best-selling writer (and successful entrepreneur) Dan Heath told me that he writes his books on a computer without email or Internet connectivity. Let me tell you something, to spend any time with Dan is to know that this is an extremely focused and disciplined guy. And yet, he says that the only way he can focus on his work is to eliminate the possibility of distractions. He’s got a plan.
You need a plan. Write it down. Make sure it works with your responsibilities and the roles you play. This may take some creativity and negotiation with others. Have times when the email is off and the browsers are closed. Consider having times when the devices are shut down and in a drawer. In a world of work created on computer screens, ideas that emerge on a blank sheet of paper, or in a conversation, or on a cocktail napkin could stand out.
Your Mission Should You Choose To Accept It: Make Your Focus Plan.
Stuck? Blocked? Or worse, mediocre? Boring? Average?
Maybe you’re hanging out with the wrong ideas. You see, your best ideas aren’t going to be found in a crowd of professionals all dressed for the office. The great idea isn’t the guy wearing the cooler tie. That crowd can’t help you now.
Your best ideas are where you might never think to look. They are right there in the middle of the crowd of your worst ideas. They are with the rude, the preposterous, the angry, the unpolished, and the infantile.
Your best ideas are twin brothers to your worst ideas. So if you want to have more of them, don’t try to have more professional ideas. Don’t even try to have more good ideas.
Try to have more bad ideas.
I see that this may come off as the kind of copy that makes good books on creativity… and little else. But I’m not writing as a guru, professor, or researcher. I’m sharing with you the secret that has led to many of the most successful ideas in a career that has been fueled by ideas. I’ve needed to break through. I’ve needed to win. Every time I showed up at a new agency job and had to prove myself. (For example, when I left the old world J. Walter Thompson to join a group of young, arrogant hotshots at Kirshenbaum & Bond, it was you win or you’re out.) When I started a new agency and had to win to eat, feed my employees and pay the rent. And every new business before and since. Most of all, the thing that makes all of those other things possible – when our ideas go out into the world and help our clients succeed at the expense of their professional but suddenly less successful competition. This has been do or die learning for me. And, mostly, I’ve thrived. It’s what works for me. Of course, you need to find out for yourself what works for you. If this helps, then I’m delighted. It’s going to be a more interesting world.
You know, it’s just not that complicated. Whatever it is that you’re selling – and you’re always selling – it always comes down to something pretty simple.
People want to feel more alive.
There it is, I said it. The man choosing an online broker. The woman deciding which blog to read. The new employee you’re trying to train. They all want the same thing, each in their own way. They want to see whether what you’ve got to offer can help them feel more alive. And you want to let them use you to get there.
Software or cancer treatment, streaming or mobile, cable or dish, or just which show to watch, it’s the same. What’s going to give me more life? What’s going to make me feel more alive?
Sometimes it’s about taming fear. Other times it’s about boosting courage. Or fun. Or a sense of self-efficacy, as in, “I can do this!”
It’s seldom about a feature or a price. But it’s often about how those things contribute to that feeling that spells more alive.
Growth leaders get this. Look at all the life the true geniuses of growth manage to pack into their products and brands! Ben & Jerry. Richard Branson’s Virgin. Steve Jobs’ Apple. Martha knew too. It’s all about living, and it’s a good thing.
Having worked along side so many of these growth masters, it’s striking just how simple and human it all looks to them, and how powerfully they radiate this simple insight.
If you want to growth, just offer people the ability to fell more alive.
Tom Civitano, EVP of Marketing for the Plaza Hotel in New York noticed a lot by working and watching the hotel’s front desk. With his agency, DiMassimo Brand Advertising (now DIGO) he did an unobtrusive survey of families checking in, asking a single, simple question, “How did you decide to stay at The Plaza.” Nearly eight out of ten families claimed the children had decided! Likely much of this phenomenon was due to Civitano’s success in getting The Plaza featured in many movies and TV shows, particularly as the star location of Home Alone 2. He had noted in other research that people, and especially children, would say they were visiting “New York City” when they were staying at other hotels but would say they were visiting “The Plaza Hotel” when staying at The Plaza. To many children, as to many adults, The Plaza was the most aspirational destination on the planet. The surprise here was the extent to which children were driving the purchase decisions of their upscale parents. Civitano did many things over the years to capitalize on this insight and to enhance the loyalty of these children, minting many lifelong Plaza guests and fans. Home Alone 2. Eloise at The Plaza. The Young Plaza Ambassadors Program. Many, many educational and culture events. Always fun. And most of all, Civitano protected and enhanced the commitment of The Plaza Hotel to be a luxury hotel unlike any other, one that treated its youngest guests as its most precious, and dedicated itself to making their every stay unforgettable!
If you want to see why growth-stage companies have such an advantage, read this little post from Seth Godin about the values of decision-makers in larger organizations:
_____ A hierarchy of business to business needs
If you’re selling a product or service to a business–to a non-owner–consider this hierarchy, from primary needs on down:
Avoiding risk
Avoiding hassle
Gaining praise
Gaining power
Having fun
Making a profit
In most large organizations, nothing happens unless at least one of these needs are met, and in just about every organization big enough and profitable enough to buy from you, the order of needs starts with the first one and works its way down the list.
That means that a sales pitch that begins with how much money the organization will make is pretty unlikely to work. Instead, the amount of profit has to be tied in to one of the other more primary needs of the person sitting across the table from you (as well as the committee or boss she reports to).
B2B selling is just like regular sales, except the customer (who might not be the person you’re meeting with) is spending someone else’s money (and wants to please the boss). See the article here.
Exactly right, Seth. Economists call this “The Principle-Agency Problem.” In short, this is the tendency of the decision-maker to put the needs of the decision-maker ahead of the best interests of the organization. You can imagine what would happen to our marketplace and our world if there weren’t innovative, fast-growing companies to challenge the large bureaucracies.
Growing companies face many obstacles, but they have one enormous compensating advantage – decision makers interests are aligned with the interests of the organization. Better decisions get made in growth-stage companies everyday.
Growth-stage companies. We love ‘em!
All the way back in 1964, David Mayer and Herbert M. Greenberg reported the findings of their research on what makes “the best salesmen” in the Harvard Business Review.
They correlated sales performance with personality test results and identified two key factors. The first – Ability to Feel — was essentially empathy, the capacity to sense what the sales prospect was feeling. The second trait – Need to Conquer – was the drive to close the sale, not just for money’s sake but because their egos absolutely required it.
In other words, the best salespeople are sociopaths. They have the rare capacity to feel what the prospect is feeling, and will single-mindedly use it to close the sale. They will do this even when they know doing so will harm the prospect. Because their egos require it.
When I worked as a B2B telemarketer during college, selling advertising specialties to small business accounts over the phone, I was an A-minus salesman. My clients liked and trusted me. I always performed in the top ten or twenty percent, and my book of business steadily grew. However, there were two salesmen on the floor that moved a lot more product than I did. I remember their methods. Whenever they made a sale, they shipped more than was ordered. And quite often when they didn’t make a sale, they shipped product anyway.
The commissions were higher that way. Returns were never more than 20%. Occasionally there were complaints and reprimands, but the sales manager didn’t have the heart to fire his unethical goldmines.
I wanted to know whether our products really worked – not just as pens, as advertising. No one knew. I wanted to build the basis of a long-term relationship with each and every client. So, at least in the short-term, I was an A-minus salesperson.
If you want to grow a great brand and business, avoid the A-plus sales types, and get yourself some good A-minus salespeople who care.
