Attracting customers: I see a pattern here, and it's dead-obvious.

Michelle Tampoya asks: How do we get people to buy?

Her advice is certainly good and probably useful, depending on how much you have dealt with the topic yourself before. To imply, however, as she does at the start of her article, that almost nobody else has a clue as to answers to that question, particularly in prolific forums such as the Business of Software or even at dedicated Micro-ISV blogs, is a little drastic to say the least. Such advice, and pretty much along the same lines, is pretty easy to get; it is what is preached on blogs and those forums whenever the question comes up, backed by those who have been there and done that quite successfully. (Most questions there are a variation of that question anyway; that's what business is about: how do I actually sell what I am offering, and once I got that sorted, how do I sell more? What is always interesting are the contextual particulars, the market, the competitors, the customers, the individual strengths and weaknesses with the consequent opportunities and threats. [1]

It is clear that with zero budget you have pretty much no other chance than to find other ways to spread the word. The best marketing is a fantastic product: even with a marketing budget, you'll need that. One of the most important lessons of marketing is that you simply cannot turn poo into chocolate, no matter how stretched your budget.

Still, I absolutely agree that it is worth pointing out that "no budget" does not mean "no chance", which is what many people still believe. Then again, I think this is more of a general state of mind that cannot be "fixed" easily by counterexamples or counterarguments. You may have the drive to find ways to "make it happen" no matter what resources are at your disposal or not. I'm not saying this is determined by nature or fate or nurture, rather that it depends on the context, but given an individual isolated situation, you will probably find that you belong to the one camp or the other, likely revealing our "real" preferences no matter what we wish they were. Just a vague suspicion on my part here.

Michelle writes:

As a community and web marketer, the question that first comes to me is not the how, but the why. "Why aren’t they buying?"

Leaving aside that, from what I have observed, this is the question most forum posters ask to begin with, suggesting that they have figured this mental leap for themselves already, I will point out that this is the only logical next question you can arrive at, were you to ask how to "get" people to buy your stuff.

How can other people be compelled to do something we want them to do? All possible answers boil down to two fundamental answers: attempting to force them (whether through fraud or at gunpoint), or to convince them by argument. In marketing, this is called "persuasion", but the idea is to:

• either design your offering so that it is obviously and plainly visibly in the best interests of that segment of the people you have identified as your target customers to buy your solution (in which case, they will do it, and the purpose of marketing simply is to reassure them, by providing the "arguments" that are applicable in the given context, which may include in a context of, say, consumer beveridges, seemingly "silly" arguments such as refreshment or lifestyle imagery)
• or, if your product is not that self-explanatory, to do the rest of the explaining because your customers cannot immediately deduce how their best self-interest is served from the evidence they have of your product or offering (maybe it is a new way of doing something, or a completely new kind of refreshment drink in jazzy colours)—in which case, the purpose of marketing is more of an argumentative challenge, but essentially the same.

I'm digressing a little but the point is that, ruling out the option of force, the only next question that you can logically arrive at after asking, "how can I get people to voluntary exchange their hard-earned cash for my product or service?" (i.e. arrive at a valuation of your product / service that ranks higher than their valuation of the sum of money you are asking for in exchange), is asking one of two "why" questions, where each will in turn lead you to the other: either "why are they not buying?", as Michelle suggested, or "why are they buying elsewhere?" / "when people do buy stuff, why do they do it?". In other words, why don't they realize (whether correctly or incorrectly aside) that my product serves their best self-interest? [2]

This isn't meant as much as a criticism of the article, as it just got me thinking and blogging after I finished reading it. Her five bullet points pretty much cover the basic prerequisites of marketing in practice, "community marketing" as it is called to contrast it with what is believed to be more "traditional", slap-in-the-face marketing.

Talking about proper marketing, I have to point out Spark This, a marketing resource that I just discovered today and that seems low on quantity (last update was in April), but for my tastes very high on quality.

---

[1] Yes, the highly-touted SWOT methodology appears rather obvious to me, I probably missed its essence. In fact, reading about it I could actually feel that I very seriously missed any essence there. As I so often do, I digress. But seriously: strengths/weaknesses are two names for the same thing: assessing yourself and your situation contextually. Opportunities/threats are again two monikers for the same thing: evaluating your findings of that assessment and interpreting consequences. But it is logically impossible, given that you have taken the initiative to assess, that you will not arrive at some conclusion, which was the point of the exercise, so the whole SWOT superstructure to me seems a little redundant and even pointless. Why state the obvious? People do that kind of analysis, arguably to varying degree and depth depending on an unknown number of local variables, all the time, it is a vital part of human action in general.)

[2] I realize that is nothing new since Adam Smith; for all the classical economists' errors, the Invisible Hand or Say's Law remain as timeless (they were valid before they were proclaimed) and true as ever.  ;)

Comments

[Gavin Bowman]

You're right, essentially there are two options:-

1. Explain the product better.
2. Make the product better.

People who can't be converted with one of those methods have probably clicked the wrong adword, or are looking for a different product.

The community marketing stuff is all very well, and I've read it many times on Seth Godin's blog, but the way it is phrased in that article sounds like it is to help established products retro-fit community marketing. "find your community and figure out why they have embraced you"? When most Micro ISVs are trying to increase conversions they are still trying to convince a community to embrace them, it's a different problem.

Most of us are open to the community already, we're out on forums, we're blogging, we're personally conversing with customers when we get the chance. We're already doing a lot more community marketing than most traditional companies.

I'm not passing any judgement on the quality of the article, but I'm not convinced it's well targeted to the Micro ISV startup... maybe the more established guys who've yet to really embrace the new web will get more out of it.

[James Jeffers]

A German software engineer who reads Mises and Rothbard - now that's cool!

[Philipp Schumann]

"You're right, essentially there are two options:- 1. Explain the product better. 2. Make the product better."

Indeed; at the very least all options boil down to these two fundamentals---and the best strategy I think is to look at both, as there is always scope for both: why rule out one or the other? ;)

James, the opportunity of reading Mises in original German definitely has its charm!

[Michelle]

Hey Philipp,

I am glad you critiqued the post. In my experience, you and Gavin are unlike many others who have contacted me for help. You get it.

But, many people don't and that is why I wrote the piece for Bob. In fact, Bob contacted me because of the number of people who have asked himthe 'how' of marketing.

So tell me this, what marketing info are you looking for? I would be more than happy to discuss the ins and outs for you based on my online experience. ;)

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