The pitch: Satisfied customers a neglected key to securing sales

By RICHARD CARTER*

The popular talk is that we're now caught in the maw of the attention economy.

From PO box to email inbox, we're coping with a rising tide of solicitations: free trials, once-in-a-lifetime offers, bulk discounts, no-obligation consultations, demonstrations and other offers.

The bad news is that the lust for attention is feeding a bigger, uglier economy - the information economy.

The stuff is fizzing out of cracks everywhere, feeding a king-sized worldwide wash, effectively neutering our ability to get any cut-through in the attention economy.

This is not what you want to hear if you're in business, particularly if you're thinking about launching a few messages of your own. So, before your business makes a splash, there's a distinction to make to get back your attention-grabbing mojo. That distinction is information vs verification.

To get people to buy your stuff, you've got to move them along a continuum, which is the major purpose of marketing communications: building awareness that converts into interest and action - and sales.

In the first phase, the information phase, prospects consider whether they are interested in buying your stuff and what benefits you may offer. The predominating mindset is: "If the claims are true, would I buy it?"

Marketers address most of their time to the first phase, in some cases to the near-total neglect of the second phase.

If we all focused more on the next phase - verification - and less on just information, we'd do much better in the attention economy. And target customers would end up breathing in a lot less of our collective exhaust.

When customer prospects ponder your claims, they need verification, which they don't believe they can get from you, because you're not perceived as objective.

Conventional marketing communication is almost irrelevant to this phase, as verification demands an experience-delivery mechanism, which is invariably a successful customer experience - as they are an objective source because they have already tried your stuff.

By using the power of satisfied customers you hasten the speed of experience gathering and, hence, verification and adoption.

So, if you want to be a serious player in the attention economy, make the distinction between information and verification. Let your customers do the talking.

* Richard Carter is Director of Talkies Group

* Email Richard Carter

* The Pitch is a forum for those working in advertising, marketing, public relations and communications. We welcome lively and topical 500-word contributions.
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