Leveraging the Corona Virus for Fun and Profit
Audio Version:
Corona this and corona that. Lets start planning for when the sanity returns.
I have a cousin and their whole family only buys Honda cars.
How does that happen?
How do you capture the Honda only effect for your business?
Part of that is to understand how the Corona panic is happening.
My buddy plans on having a Yoga Party in Santa Monica when we can all be close to one another once again. #coronaisoverparty
Lets discover some ways to leverage what you already know. So when this scare passes you win and your prospects can win.
People are extremely emotional and as such are easily led.
It is also useful to know how this thing scared so many into momentarily shutting everything down.
First of all….
This Too Shall Pass
The COVID19 will go away.
But the mental viruses that infect us all will breed and attempt to incubate within us every single day of our life.
And you can use GOOD mental viruses to build your business.
What is an example of a mental virus?
Do you remember the Ice Bucket challenge? That thing went viral and made millions for the ALS charity. And it was a simple Whisper Down the Lane Game that we played as kids.
How to Bottle Lightening
Imagine you have the greatest thing ever that can change the world. But its a bit technical and complicated to explain. How are you supposed to bottle that and sell it?
Enter Covid 19.
Lovingly called Corona Virus.
THE Corona Virus. That sounds even more ominous and fixed with “THE”.
It implies life.
I often will reference Google as an animated being. “when Google ranks your website, it…..”
I also will use it purposefully to describe a process.
Which it really is. A +B+C+D. Which puts most people to sleep.
One way that we can describe mind control is it adjusts your reality.
A hypnotist once told me:
When you name something, you make it real.
When you describe it, you bring it to life.
Let’s use current happenings as a launching point on creating strength in your marketing and weakening concepts that you may not want attached to your brand.
In the podcast I explain something called a nominalization. As use of nouns and verbs can empower your brand or sneakingly dis-empower your brand.
It is a favorite way for hypnotists and leaders and copywriters to bottle lightening.
There was a popular book in the mid 90’s called Selling the Invisible.
Describing the frustration all services suffer from in that there is not something you can touch, hear or feel of your to service.
I believe that this is more salient today than back then because most of our experience with services and even products are artificial throughyour webpage.
It is why I counsel that you produce videos, audios and texts that prove your expertise and novelty in your marketplace. Spread them on your websites, your socials, and Google My Business.
As I explain in the previous Social Domination series is best done via your authoritative persona.
Thus, we could be able to differentiate ourselves from everyone else who is the same. To de-commoditize.
” ….. services are invisible, and they don’t therefore act as a constant positive reminder to the customer in this way. Beckwith makes the point that many purchasers of services aren’t even sure what it is that they are buying, since it hasn’t typically been delivered yet. Clients typically cannot evaluate expertise (which is what service marketers are selling), since they lack the technical skills with which to evaluate the expert. In most cases, they cannot tell whether a doctor’s diagnosis was correct, whether a tax return was filed properly, or whether a marketing plan was crafted well. Accordingly the customer’s motivation may be as much or more risk avoidance (i.e. minimizing the consequences of a bad decision) than trying to get the very best service that might be available. Good service marketers will understand this and try to provide assurance that there will not be problems. ”
consulttci.com/Book_reviews/invisible.html
In today’s digital age, much of what we sell is the invisible even when we sell products because it often starts online. And we live in a disposable age.
The loyalty to stay with your page and your brand is less and less by the day. Unless you cause stickability. The best way is through your persona.
To build your name.
To build your differentiation.
So that your message can spread, virally.
A long time client called me today. He said Tim,
“perception is reality”.
So lets then discover how to manufacture reality in your prospects mind like the Ice Bucket Challenge.
And to understand that, I ask if you have ever been afraid of ghosts?
I know when I was in the 6th grade I thought a giant snake was under my bed.
And if I hung my arm off the side of the bed it would devour me. So I would stay awake until the wee hours of the night until I could not help but sleep. Elementary school became a real drag lol.
Ridiculous right? But to me at that time it was real as me typing this article for you.
The unknown, unverifiable is super easy to implant into our imaginations if we accept a premise.
There were some scary movies that friends told me about. Whereby my imagination created a story far more terrifying than the movie that my little pals had critiqued for me.
Humans Are Meaning Makers
It is part of our survival at the very reptillian/prehistoric level in our brains.
We find meaning in so many valuable things. Like husband or wife, father or mother. Etc.
But we also attach meanings when tragedy and or bliss arrives.
So over the last several days…
How many times have you asked yourself what does this virus mean?
The market dropped at a record making pace. what does this mean?
Then it came back.what does this mean?
Then it dropped the biggest ever, then it came back the biggest ever.what does this mean?
Interest Rates are the best ever? What does this mean?
200 people died sadly in Italy.what does this mean?
The more we ask ourselves this over and over can freak us out!
What does it mean?
Nothing. Or whatever you choose. That my friend is reality. Your reality. Or your prospects reality you put onto them.
So. How do we create “what does this mean” to serve your business?
How do we bring to life the services and processes that compel your audience to want to taste your offerings ?
Memes
Most think of a meme as a graphic with a cute snippet of words.
But the idea is to get them moved virally.
Yes a meme is a virus. Through thought. It is a thought virus.
When I first heard of this years ago, I thought it was woo woo esoteric nonsense.
But I have come to find it is real and it is predictable.
Think Ice Bucket Challenge.
This is a positive example of using a thought virus for a positive good. Is it manipulative? I will leave you to your own judgement on that.
Memes start as a thought and spread like a contagion or gene. A gene’s only mandate and purpose is to replicate and spread. It will mutate to survive.
Why my cousin buys Hondas. Always.
My prediction is that this covid panic will disappear as fast as it appeared. I have many reasons for that opinion and many from which I am not an expert .
But I will share from a perspective from which I am quite familiar.
Information spreads faster than ever before in history today. Even faster than a physical contagion.
Neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin said in the NY Times recently that, “on a typical day, we take in the equivalent of about 174 newspapers’ worth of information, five times as much as we did in 1986.”
As a result, the insula, the “attentional filter” of the brain that tells us what to pay attention to and what we can safely ignore is overworked, says Levitin.
Why ?
all the world is ending,
well maybe its not,
it is,
its not,
ad nauseum.
Mix confusion in with panic and the fire rages higher.
What does this mean?
Again, what do you want it to mean?
In the audio and video I discuss how one can create a product. Capture lightening and putting it into a bottle. I quickly track products that we grew up with like a Rolling Stone Album or The Wall by Pink Floyd.
These were fully immersive experiences.
To literally sell the invisible. Or the ghost to stay on topic with the virus thing.
But in a positive way.
Most know what a Placebo does.
That is when you are told candy is medicine and you recover back to health. Because of your belief in the healing power of the fake medicine.
How about Nocebo?
This is when for example they get given medicine, are told it is poison when it is only candy. And then get ill from the pretend poison.
These work depending on the study, about 60% of the time.
Indeed, perception is reality.
Lets go through some of the many ways beyond the audio video to build your business into a fortress of benefits to your prospects.
Meme-We covered this above and I really suggest the book Virus of the Mind. As we learned with THE Ice Bucket Challenge it was done within the context of a game. A game we mostly played as children.
Name/Label-As mentioned above when you name something it now takes up space in your prospects mind. I have often taught that if I can make a lightbulb go off in a prospects mind, then I own that space forever. Your lightbulb is the reference that they build the rest of their comprehension upon.
I was once told by a respected elder, that this couple that he knew was very similar to my wife and I. I asked what do you mean by that?
He said, “you know, normal”.
Now understand I am extremely careful on what is put onto me as a label from someone who I lend authority and respect towards.
Labels risk becoming your identity. Choose wisely.
I said, “excuse me, my marriage is anything but normal, and in fact it is extraordinary!”
Similarly choose how your services are labeled.
Let’s say you are on the dating scene and really like a young lady. But you messed up and you are stuck in the dreaded friend zone.
But what if you reframed that label for her reference to you as her Hot, Sexy Friend?
Let’s consider some industry names that might help you out. These are very similar to what the used car industry did to reframe into the pre-owned car market:
Realtor
- Realtor or Home Consultant?
- Real Estate Agent or Moving Transaction Specialist
Usually this works good with a location. - Santa Clarita Valley Moving and Transactions Specialist.
- The Home Transfer Team
Even better with “The” or ” Your” - The Santa Clarita Valley Home Buyer Specialist
- The Del Boca Vista Rental Specialist -also denotes exclusivity
- The Home Advisor
Something about the word THE that makes everything else after it feel more real.
Dentistry
- Your Dental Enhancement Specialist
- Your Better Tooth Team
- The Torrance Smile Doc
- The Smile Center
- The Teeth Enhancer Center
Aesthetics or Plastic Surgery
- The Body Enhancement Center
- The Optimized Body Center
- Your Body Hacker Builder
- The Body Advisor
- Your Cellulite Zapper
A recent article in TheCut reports how we will name our appliances which gives them human qualities. 25% polled have a name for their car. There are a number of psychological principles explored around naming.
The implications are staggering. And why perhaps Coca Cola ran a campaign for awhile with people’s names on their can. A way of personalizing it.
There was a sports bar here in town. It was a huge space. And
Appealing to vanity:
“If you’re going to name something, there’s a chance someone is going to hear the name,” he explained. Since you’re probably not going to be chatting with friends about your porcelain throne, you’re not likely to name it.
You get the idea.
What we are doing is learning how to make your business come alive in the minds of your clients and prospects.
Emotion Animates the Inanimate
What else is driving this covid meme but the intense emotion around it? To consider that we or someone we love might die is terrifying. Stack that onto the scary notion that a world wide economic melt down is being considered as a reality by some . And you have yourself a dynamite thought virus. And the meaning machine goes into overdrive.
And many business owners are still raw from the 2008 meltdown. This adds to your emotion.
Your clients might be no different.
So how can you put positive emotion onto your services ? By describing benefits and outcomes. But also value based selling which you can get help from Kenrick Cleveland who has clients that have has sold millions of dollars using his methods.
Value based selling simply put, sells the prospects most important emotions to them.
You can anchor positive emotions to your service.
But the easiest way is back to verbs and nouns that invoke positive buying emotions. Think about what state you want your prospect to be in when it is right before the time for them to make a purchase.
- Curiosity
- Want
- Desire
- Intelligent
One thing that is stirring many online debates around the virus is motivated by the individuals need to feel intelligent.
Many move more intensely away from, than toward. Once again this scare demonstrates this brilliantly.
To bring your service alive consider the words that represent toward and away from emotions or states.
Describing Your Process
Another way is to describe how you make your sausage.
In the audio/video I describe a simple way that you can use verbs and nouns to do this.
To add to the method. What we are doing is attempting to tell your story and claim your novel methods. Even if your methods are not so novel in the marketplace like Olympia Beer commercials in the 70s:
Something that Ries and Trout claimed was of utmost importance in their seminal Positioning:The Battle For Your Mind .
The other day I was speaking with a client in the medical industry. He told me the amount of money they spend on linen and making their facility incredibly clean. I told him man what a great time to tell that story. In fact, they are even asking if their appointments have been careful and or have demonstrated that they might have symptoms of being ill. Then it might be best to reschedule.
I recommended that he tell that story.
Tell your brands story through time. That Beer commercial above was not the only one they did. The Artesian water was a purposeful mythology that they installed through time, through their media.
You can easily do that today. The fortune spent anyway on hygiene is my client’s Artesian well.
And it is piggybacking the narrative already going on in everyone’s mind. It is a good story to tell in a normal environment. A must in this environment.
Realtor’s are reacting to the story.
Some are leveraging the story in order to demonstrate like my medical friend that they are keeping a sanitary experience
“We are seeing a lot more hand sanitizer and Clorox wipes at open houses,” says Wes Jones managing broker with Keller Williams in the Seattle suburb of Bellevue, WA. “We also make sure to wipe down the front door handle a number of times throughout the open house. It also appears that not shaking hands at all is quickly becoming acceptable……Meanwhile, more home sellers leery of the potential health risk of strangers at their open houses are refusing to host them.”
This has prompted some outside the box thinkers to reconsider the use of virtual tours which are easier to produce than ever, as a nice introductory way to introduce a home buyer to a house.
The industry watchdog NAR has even issued a COVID19 Standard of Care statement that any industry or business might adapt. And if I were you and you abide by these rules then run with them in your marketing. As statements of standards.
I saw a plastic surgeon do just that a few days ago as they posted an Instagram meme on their hygiene standards.
In 2009 I penned a wonderful article on owning a home. It was inspired by the movie Marley and Me. It was a reframe of the doom and gloom of the great recession and was to serve as a model I hoped for Realtors to sell Lifestyle Over Greed. As Realtors could no longer sell greed, as the market is going up so you better buy now.
It got such a cool reception that I developed positive Real Estate, which now lives at Facebook. Its come alive slogan was “where we reframe the news.”
What this whole article describes is your methodology to separate yourself from your competition. To what I call De-Commoditize.
When your services become real to your prospects, like the intense fear of COVID19 is real to many of your prospects.
So your homework is to brainstorm how to make your business come alive. And to prepare for your coming out now and after Corona when pent up demand will bring you more business than you have ever received. Believe it! #coronaisoverparty
In conclusion, this was step on of the continuation of the Social Domination Series which leads up to this start of the SEO Domination series. Why because a HUGE part of modern day is your brand.
And brand is predicated on trust.
You create trust through metrics. And what we have discussed here is how to create trust within your searchers and Google. Good metrics means good stickability. When your brand and its related terms come alive . You have trust and stickability.