Give them more than feeds 'n speeds
Facts are dry. Facts are without the context of the how, why and what. Facts that fly in the face of what prospects believe or “know” won’t get you any traction in your marketing. Even if they’re brilliant. Unless you use them as evidence behind a compelling story.
For example:
Our customers achieve 200% ROI, on average, within one quarter.
Wow! Who wouldn’t like 200% ROI? In one quarter, no less. But what does that mean to your prospect? Below are some of the possible reactions:
- What was their ROI in the first place? Were they total bone heads that were in the negative ranges of ROI to begin with?
- How much was the investment the ROI is calculated against?
- How did they do it?
- Is it solely attributable to using your product, or did the whole company improve that much based on a variety of initiatives and process improvements?
- How hard was it?
- How long did it take to implement?
- What changes did the company need to make to get that result?
- Was this a completely new initiative for them and the results are calculated against zero?
- Was that a fluke?
- Can they afford it?
Using facts without the rest of the story means you’re leaving the interpretation open to the prospect, and diminishing the believability. Even if it’s is correct. They will interpret, believe or disbelieve it based on their perspective and emotional reaction to the fact you presented. By combining facts with story, your marketing communications can establish the context in which those facts will be internalized and projected onto their own problem and opportunity areas.
Changing the status quo is not easy. It’s not a one-time shot. It often takes up to ten communications to get a response. So, bombarding them with facts is leaving a lot of room for interpretation. From the prospect’s perspective it can also be extremely irritating – and often viewed as yet more marketing hype.
Facts can be useful as validation for painting the picture of the need for change, of the positive outcome provided by your products, or both. But without the supporting evidence, the answers to the questions above, most people either won’t know what to do with the facts or they will ignore them because they have no context in which to apply and believe them.
They’ll make up their own stories about them. They’ll decide the truthfulness of the fact in their world, despite what you think is a truly significant statistic. If they don’t like it, they may minimize or reassign it based on what they know, what they’ve experienced in the past or how they’ve been conditioned through their company’s culture.
Facts have a place and can definitely add value as evidence of benefits. But marketing must provide a context for the facts that is applicable and believable or you’re taking a big chance that prospects will interpret the facts much differently than you expected them to.
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B2B marketing strategist Ardath Albee helps companies significantly increase their marketing momentum by generating more and better leads for their sales organizations. She helps them capture the attention of web site visitors, and strengthen engagement with high value content till they are "sales ready." Visit the Marketing Interactions website: www.marketinginteractions.com.