Search:

The BIG Lesson of the Month - Sell With Personality!

By: Drew020

When we have friends around for dinner, my wife loves to bring out a personality test book called ‘Please Understand
In this particular test I came out as a ‘mastermind' type, which apparently means that I like cooking up ideas in my marketing lab and then I get quickly frustrated when other people don't follow my instructions. Sounds about right.

All of this leads me to bring up a topic that's not just a BIG lesson, it's a JUMBO lesson of gigantic proportions.

Do you know what the ultimate marketing sin is? There's all kinds of possibilities, (and I see lots of contenders on a daily basis) but I'll let you in on the ULTMATE marketing sin. The ultimate marketing sin is being boring! Yep, that's right. There's no excuse for not amusing your customers while you sell.

Let's face it, we're all overloaded with, stress, health problems, bad news etc, so it's a breath of fresh air when we can smile or laugh. Whoever said that marketing had to be dull? Seems like that's the standard most people go for, so it's really not that difficult to do better.

Note that we're not talking about telling jokes or making the humor the main focus. It's simply about one word: personality. Everyone has personality *(as we've seen) -

some are more interesting characters than others, but we all have personality. So why is it that as soon as someone tries to write an eBay listing or a website sales letter, they suddenly go all formal?

People relate to other humans, not unnatural sounding corporate style messages that have had all personality sucked out of them.

Exhibit A shows a sample signup form for the Digg online community. Don't worry if you don't know what Digg is, it's not important. Okay, I'll give you a brief explanation. – It's a website that allows people to let others know when they've come across an interesting article or video.

We've all seen signup forms like the one shown, we're very familiar with them. But Digg made it fun to enter your details. They entertain and amuse while you go through what's normally a very boring process.

Firstly, when you;'re asked to select your gender, rather than the traditional ‘male/female' choices, Digg offers:

Guy

Girl

Dude

Lady
Fellow

Bird

Chap

Grrrl

Gentleman

Damsel

Transgender

None of the above

Being British, I chose ‘chap' of course.

Further down the form, there's one of those boxes where you have to copy the characters you see on screen, into a box. Instead of the usual warning along the lines of ‘for security reasons we need you to enter the code..' on Digg we're simply asked, ‘Are You Human?' which gets right to the point in a friendly way.

Isn't it amazing that with hundreds of thousands of web forms out there, I only just came across one that entertained me? I think there's room for improvement, don't you?

Now, I hate to be hard on you but I have to share some rules with you about personality:

Rule 1: Don't try and be all things to all people. In other words, you can't please everyone, it's impossible. The very act of injecting personality means that you'll alienate some customers who don't like your style. That's fine, it's better that way. By contrast, the plain vanilla, corporate middle-ground alternative is not where you want to be if you want to get noticed.

Rule 2: Don't try and be someone who you're not. Your favorite comedian might be Steve Martin, but there's only one Steve Martin. The same thing can be said of any well known entertainer. If buyers believe you're just trying to copy a well known personality, you'll lose them. The best way to start is by exagerating your natural qualities. Inject the kinds of things your friends like about you. Joe Polish, advisor to the carpet cleaning industry came up with a little acronym called ‘ELF'. He's always asking people if they have an elf business. Then he explains: easy, fun and lucrative. That fits with Joe's personality very well.

Rule 3: Ironically, this rule is to break the rules of grammar. Your English teacher isn't here to rap your knuckles anymore, and your customers will respond better to a plain talkin', straight shootin' style than a dull corporate memo from head office. Memo schmemo. Marketing is supposed to invigorate customers into life, not send them to sleep.

Rule 4: Always remember your aim is to sell. Don't let the personality take center stage over the message. And don't go off on tangents that divert the attention of the reader from the main aim of – getting them to buy from you. Also, stay away from off color, crude language that will offend many. Bad language isn't funny to most people. Sorry, that was more like a bunch of last minute, extra rules - not one rule - wasn't it?!

Note that you can also make your product into a character and use that as the personality. Think of the Energizer bunny, the Budweiser frogs, Kellogg'sTony The Tiger and so on.

All of this advice applies to your eBay listings just as it does to any other selling environment. People are people. Businesses don't buy anything, people do.

Get creative with how you present yourself and your products., don't be afraid to take some risks. I think you can see by now that buyers respond to REAL people, and if you can throw in a hint of wackiness then so much the better.

Will it take work to inject personality in your marketing to create character,? Yes, of course. But like any skill, it'll become a valuable asset in your business, and you'll jump light years ahead of your competitors.