It seems that the big marketing successes of all times have been promoting opinion and outright falsehoods as truth.

Emerson is quoted as saying:

build a better mousetrap and they’ll beat a path to your door.

While Emerson has written and stated many great truths, this is not one of them.  In fact if you build a better mouse trap, the PR machines will kick in from your competitors and work at shooting you down.  The fact is if you want to promote something then you’d better have the biggest mouth.

A couple of examples, that you should eat margerine instead of butter, that high fructose corn syrup should be in everything.  Both of these “truths” have their part in the current obesity epidemic in the US.

What other half-truths are out there that you may be using to make decisons with, or products that you may be using that perhaps another choice would be better (hint: perhaps you should avoid high fructose corn syrup)?

Hype is pervasive in our society today.  Everyway we turn someone has a sign or a mesage aimed at our senses.  Repitition of ideas makes us feel comfortable about them, after time we adopt them without giving any real consideration at all.

Always understand your reasons for doing things, is it something considered, or something that has been implanted by repetition of messages that have been presented to your senses?

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A big part of successfully putting a software product in the market is generating a big buzz – in other words evangelism. It’s also called: USP – Unique Selling Proposition – a necessary part of doing business because usually if you ‘build a better mousetrap’ they won’t beat the path to your door. The won’t unless you do what Guy is talking about — evangelize it.

I’d love to be able to sit home and ‘Ohmmmmm’ (replace that with your mantra of choice) my way to success. Make no mistake it’s an important component – getting your head in the game. The visualization – holding the thought in the ‘thinking substance’ it all works together to bring your success. But you need the action part too. Napoleon Hill deals more with it in Think and Grow Rich. Charles Schwab evangelized a group of Eastern bankers and brought US Steel into being (chapter 3). You can listen to the story here:

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The idea was born to Schwab but if he hadn’t evangelized it there may have been no U.S. Steel, perhaps the Carnegie foundation wouldn’t be so well endowed, perhaps there wouldn’t have been so many Carnegie libraries around. This idea not only made Schwab, J.P. Morgan, and the investors a lot of money. It also increased Carnegie’s wealth. Without the libraries and the good works of the foundation, what might not have happened? Would we be missing something that benefited us. Who can measure the far reaching impact of that speech – that evangelization?

Evangelism is not a religious word but rather a word from the Greek meaning bring the good news. This is a video about marketing, about selling a product and providing value in the marketplace.

Technorati Tags: evangelism, kawasaki, marketing, sales