“We had fed the heart on fantasy,

The heart’s grown brutal from the fare.”

~ W.B. Yeats

The #1 Question Your Prospects & Customers are Asking?

“What is the truth?”

Last night I watched a movie about two magicians who, after a tragic happening, dedicate their careers to gaining the ascendancy.

Lost in a world of magical illusion, they are no longer sure of the truth and don’t even trust themselves.

I hate to say it, but the parallels between this movie and the current state of global political discourse are startling… AND they have important implications for your marketing as well as your overall believability.

The Importance of the “Trust Factor”

Whether your primary audience is watching or reading

• fiction,
• reality TV,
• news,
• political discourse,
• biography,
• or…
• (And if your audience isn’t watching or reading any of these, you have a different problem altogether!)

Anyway, whatever their preferred inputs, your audience knows that they are exposed to large amounts of interpretation and ‘spin’.

This means that they are wary of it and quick to spot it, so if you want people to trust you, you need to work hard to earn and maintain that trust.

“Constant Exposure” has a Price

One of two things happens through constant exposure to anything.

Either…

• You become influenced by it so that it creeps into your psyche and you reject anything that doesn’t fit the narrative you have adopted; OR
• You become intensely sceptical and either accept anything that follows the party-line or reject just about everything you hear altogether and stick with the ‘tried and true’.

Sadly, that’s the reality of audience that you are marketing to… and it means that you need to shape your marketing strategy to overcome their resistance to both novelty and hype.

You have a couple of choices, you can decide to use the philosophy they’ve already accepted and only market to people who fit that profile, or you can market to people who you believe are open to new ideas and challenge their philosophy.

Whichever route you choose, you need to tactfully merge both logic and emotion in order to build trust.

When challenged about the logical improbability of some of his scenes, Alfred Hitchcock famously said, “The public doesn’t care about logic.” He was right in the context of his movies, but you’d be foolish to completely ignore the ‘logic’ behind a prospect (or customer’s) choice in your marketing approach, so you need to build that in as well as the emotional appeal.

As I once heard someone say, “When your prospect makes a buying decision there’s the reason he really buys, and the reason he tells his wife.”

Time & Trust

The more opportunities you provide for people to engage with your thought and personality and the more media you are able to use, the faster you can build trust and the more consistently you can retain that trust.

These days there are many different media you can use and there’s really no excuse for irregular communication.

Here are just a few options you can use that don’t depend on appointments and scheduling:

• Book
• Email
• Audio
• Video
• Text
• Walkie-talkie apps

Consistency is important – which is why a book or regular email is so useful. Both of these media offer your prospect the opportunity to explore your thinking in an ongoing fashion. Spontaneous, unscripted, audio, walkie-talkie, and video communications are another way of taking the conversation even deeper and building that sense of relationship.

Knowing your market is always critical. These days, every member of your target market (no matter what that target market is) has bought into a narrative that has an element of fantasy. It’s your job to help them feel and experience your genuine trustworthiness by building a consistent, ongoing relationship.

How well are you doing that?