The ARt and Science of Captivating Mindshare

Yesterday, I shared my new logo and mentioned my new tagline, "The Art and Science of Captivating Mindshare." Today, I'd love to share my thought process as I created this tagline for my marketing business. I'll start with mindshare and work backwards.

Mindshare
According to Wikipedia, mindshare relates generally to the development of consumer awareness or popularity, and is one of the main objectives of advertising and promotion. When people think of examples of a product type or category, they usually think of a limited number of brand names.

If you think about it, to become front of mind with a prospect when a need or want happens is the ultimate goal. When we're ready to part ways with our hard earned cash to buy what we want or need, most of us have already spent time "looking" and have someone or some place in mind to start with... that starting place is where we, as businesses, want to be. We want to have a chance to offer our products or services to consumers ready to buy. Marketing brings prospects to the table and if done to perfection, the person that sells the consumer is the consumer himself. 

In other words, by the time prospects speak to you, wouldn't it be great if they already knew something about you and your business that made them WANT to do business with you... maybe even before you EVER knew them?

Captivating
Ah, to captivate. It's my goal to equip businesses to grow by rewarding advocates of  products or services they believe in. We share from a position of providing an effective, transparent solution to problems in such a way that even the majority of the population, being sales resistant, would be captivated. They would consider our offers and either become customers or tell others they know about us, leading to the organic growth of good.

Science
The science side of marketing pertains to technology and tools available for us to use to share our message with others. Technology allows us to turn our advocates and customers into referral centers. Certain tools take into the psychology of consumers and rewards our customers to edify our businesses with those they know. 

Art
The art side of marketing pertains to relationship building. This requires an understanding personality types. It teaches us that only 15% of us like to be sold to, yet 100% of us want to buy. For example, the last time I bought a car, as I walked around dealership lots, I typically saw 3 or 4 sales reps waiting to pounce. If someone approached too early and asked me if I needed help finding something, my knee jerk reaction was to say, "No thanks, just looking." Ironically, I was open to conversation, just not quite the sales conversation yet. It's not to say that I don't believe sales reps should approach prospects, I just believe they should buffer their sales conversation with something relational. You know, create rapport! For example, one sales rep, approached me and as I was ready to brush him off, he said, "Hot day! Would you like me to grab you a bottle of water?" I said, "No thanks, I'm good! However, I'm interested in test driving your 4 Runner." 

The art side of marketing says, "There may be a well known Goliath in your arena, but there's also only one of you! And, that's what really matters."