3 December 2009

By Ken Schmaltz, Marketing Director, Twist Marketing

I was recently at Best Buy looking for a boombox with a dock for my Microsoft Zune (What’s a Zune? I’ll answer that question later in the article), when I overheard a teenager telling the sales person he wanted an iPod. The teen’s purchasing criteria were:
• Plays videos
• Built-in FM radio
• 16 GB of storage
• Under $150

No such iPod exists. The closest fits at Best Buy were :
• Older-model 8 GB iPod Nano for $139.95
• Recently released fifth-generation 8 GB iPod Nano for $154.99
• Recently released fifth-generation 16 GB iPod Nano for $194.99

None of these had a built-in radio. In fact, of the teen’s four critieria, the only one the iPods met was playing videos. So the sales person recommended an mp3 player that had everything the boy wanted, a Sony Walkman for $129.99.

You can probably guess which one the boy didn’t pick: the Sony player that met all of his criteria. He ended up digging a little deeper into his pocket, sacrificing features, and buying the fifth-generation 8 GB iPod Nano.

Why? Because his emotional attachment to being seen with an Apple iPod trumped the logic behind his other criteria.

All purchasing decisions are like an iceberg. They’re based 10% on the facts and features (the part of the iceberg that you can see above the surface of the water) and 90% on emotion (the bulk of the iceberg below the water). Whether you’re buying chewing gum, an mp3 player, a car or a multi-million dollar enterprise software system, your emotions will guide your decision-making process.

Our job as marketers is to create an emotional response that allows our sales people to either bypass the facts entirely or reduce them to a check list that our products and services uniquely meet. In high-tech, everyone remembers the old saying, “No one ever got fired for buying IBM.” Their stuff might not be the best, but it’ll probably work. If it doesn’t work and something mission critical goes code red, you can always say, “But it’s IBM, I went with the safe choice, so it’s not my fault.” That other newer solution with more features that better meets your needs, from a company nobody’s heard of...if it doesn’t work and the company grinds to a halt, your butt is on the line for having championed it.

Not only did this emotional response (you won’t lose your job) win IBM more sales, it allowed them to charge higher prices. The same holds true of iPods (they’re cool and they’ll make you cool, too), BMWs (would you rather drive a Toyota dressed up as a Lexus, or authentic German metal from a company that only makes high-performance vehicles for discerning drivers?), you name it.

The Twist: All purchasing decisions are emotional. If your marketing elicits an emotional response from your customers, you create an uphill battle for competitors that focus solely on features and benefits.

Now, what’s a Microsoft Zune? It’s my mp3 player of choice. All the features I want, less expensive than an iPod and a non-conformist, anti-iPod attitude I can relate to. It even has Zune-to-Zune file sharing, so I can swap songs with other Zune users...if I ever meet one. Turns out not too many people feel like I do about iPods, which is probably why nobody seems to make boomboxes or anything else with a Zune dock.

For more marketing articles, please visit www.twistmarketing.com/resources