Goals Gone Wild

Catchy title, wouldn't you say? That's what I thought when I saw it at this blog describing a recent Harvard Business School study which you can find at blogs.ft.com "Goals gone wild -- and how to tame them". The title caught my attention and got me to read the blog. Unfortunately the blog was not as interesting and catchy as it's title. But the point is that it got me to read the article.

What this brought to mind was a marketing concept that we teach our clients. Before I go into that concept, let me say that good marketing is an extremely important activity during this economic downturn. In fact in my next blog I will give you a recent article we wrote for our clients and prospective clients that directly addresses why marketing is so important during bad economic times. In the meanwhile I'll simply point out that during a down economy most businesses cut back on marketing because they feel that they can't afford it. In actual fact, what you have to do during a recessionary period is at least as much, if not MORE marketing than you've done before. If you don't, you'll continue the down slide that many businesses find themselves in - it's truly a dwindling spiral. Again, more on that in our next blog.

Now, relative to the cute "goals gone wild" title I presented above - if you read the article you'll notice that the article is at best only somewhat interesting to a select group of business people. None-the-less the title was clever enough to catch most people's attention and get you to read on. So, what's that have to do with marketing? A lot.

We teach our clients to survey their client and patient base on a variety of subjects ranging from why they chose this particular office to how the service was. From doing correct surveys one can easily find out the primary answer to the subject of that particular survey. The primary answer can then get translated into a marketing "button" - meaning a phrase that instantly captures the attention of the great majority of people looking at it.

It is a marketing rule that you have less than a second to capture your audience's attention from a marketing piece to get them to read on. So getting the right "button" is extremely important in order to get the person to then read what your message is and become interested in what you are trying to say. For example, if you were a chiropractor and you surveyed your patient base as to what successes they had with your service and found out that 55% of your patients said you cured their headaches. You would then design your "button" around headaches and come up with a catchy button that grabbed their attention. Just like "Goals Gone Wild".

If you have any feedback on this, let us know by visiting our discussion forum at the Silkin Facebook Page.

More on the economy and marketing in our next blog.


Larry Silver
President, Silkin

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