Customers now want ultra-personalized services beyond personalization. They want businesses to go beyond recognizing themselves, to see potential needs that they didn't even realize and bring them amazing joy. (Like a surprise!) For personalized services, marketers need to come up with more pointed marketing strategies. See three pencil sharpeners and three tips for marketers' real-life solutions today, recommended by Harry Beckwith, a world-renowned marketing expert who won the American Marketing Association's top prize.

[Preview of the series]
① a sharpened marketing strategy
② a branding strategy that is completely unambiguous
③ the pinnacle of persuasion, the strategy of a well-selling website

Pencil sharpener 1: Free informational content

Free informational content is a huge weapon that disarms customers. Why? When you think of the process by which customers access content, you can immediately see why. Customers search keywords for questions or solutions, expect "answers" and click on our content. Customers who are free and satisfied with corporate content with the information they want (even if they leave right away) will be impressed with our brand. Customers who are impressed by the content and want to choose more options will actively explore our brand. It's the moment when a simple search visitor is acquired as a potential customer.

Harry Beckwith points out in his book Sell Invisible Innovation, "In an era where there is constant exaggeration calling for the best and the first, companies should not make customers sick of their strong arguments." Rather, he says that the most important thing is to earn the trust of customers by creating free informational content. We need to send high-quality content regularly to make our company feel 'worth listening' to our company's story. Even if we don't say anything about brand value, customers who start to trust through content naturally start looking at the products we sell.

Pencil sharpener 2: a material that emphasizes one overwhelming thing

Which of the 30 reasons to buy a product and one overwhelming advantage does it have more power? Harry Beckwith says that one overwhelming advantage is much more effective in encouraging customer behavior. The reason is that no matter how carefully customers try to buy, they feel pressured to think too deeply. Thinking is an activity that drains our energy very much. Even if too many advantages are listed, we face energy depletion in our attempts to verify all of them. The tired customer reserves their decision.

There is an interesting experiment that supports this. Barry Schwartz, a psychology professor at Swarthmore University in the U.S., held a tasting event at a local mart to learn the patterns of jams. One group had six jams and the other had 24 jams. As a result, customers who tasted six jams saw a 30 percent purchase rate, while those who tasted 24 jams saw a 3 percent purchase rate. This completely reverses traditional economic view that given the choice, you will get more satisfaction. What if we don't let the customers think too much about the paradox of choice and instead urge them to make a strong decision? If we focus on one overwhelming advantage, we can simplify advertising materials and detailed pages.

Pencil sharpener 3: Copywriting that focuses on "fear" instead of "desire"

Many marketers focus on their customers' desires. What do customers want? They want to induce customer behavior with product descriptions and advertisement phrases that maximize customer needs. Surprisingly, humans respond more to fear than to desire. Harry Beckwith cited Maslow's theory of the stage of need. It is said that humans are designed to think of the next level of need only after overcoming threatened environments.

Studies have shown that the pain of the loss is far greater than the joy of the profit. According to a study by Daniel Kahneman, a psychology professor at Princeton University who was the first psychologist to receive the Nobel Prize in economics, people tend to avoid losing money over the same size of profit. They are more sensitive to the risk of losing $20 than to the satisfaction of accidentally earning $20. So, marketers should be more explicit about the losses they will incur if they miss or choose not to make copies that arouse their customers' desire. Even the same pop-up phrase is more effective in "don't miss out on the benefits" than "check out the benefits."

3 Tips for Solving Chronic Marketing Problems

Problem ① "The brand image is too solid."
If the corporate image in the market is formed too strongly, marketers may feel helpless as if they can't do anything. The image can become entrenched and new attempts can be considered meaningless. If you use this stereotype as a campaign material to turn it around, you can break the stereotypes of customers. Maximize your brand stereotypes and show a completely different side of the company. The bigger the stereotype about our brand, the more the content (or advertisement) that breaks it will resonate.

Problem ② "The competitor is too strong."
The resistance to change is unexpectedly strong. Customers tend to keep the status quo. If you have a brand that is loved enough to be an oligopoly, market entry or market share repair is really difficult. To win this, we need to persistently convince our customers why it is better to choose our product than to "keep the status quo." We need to continue explaining the benefits of breaking down the status quo. We need to tempt them into a "new illusion" that if we get out of the status quo, we can enjoy something much better. It can be difficult, but it's never impossible.

Problem ③ "Our product is too difficult to understand."
Selling invisible, intangible services or products is extremely challenging. This is due to the fact that customers perceive the product as 'ambiguity' itself. In this case, our competitor is not another brand. Potential customers who do not know us will be a barrier. Because what they don't understand cannot be purchased. Marketers must experience our products to their customers at this time. They provide free trial services and let them try them out for themselves. We need to increase customer contact points such as various promotions, offline events, and pop-up stores so that more potential customers can experience it. Nothing is more obvious than experience. Experience beats ambiguity.

The following content included a "completely unambiguous branding strategy" that even marketers who do not know branding can easily follow.

The following content will be released on September 24 (Tuesday).

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