How Business Builders Sizes Up:
Key #5: What We Need to Know about Marketing

Although we provided enough in-depth information in this Web site for you to make an informed decision concerning choosing a marketing consulting firm, there is more we would love to share with you concerning the laws of marketing, consumer behavior and the marketing formula. For example, there is a scale of emotions you can learn to apply that actually removes emotional barriers that prevent people from making purchases. Here is an example from Marc Aronson’s marketing manual, “The Secrets to Marketing Success.”

Removing emotional barriers

Often an emotional barrier prevents consumers from purchasing a product or service when it is in their best interest to do so. One of the advantages of conducting surveys is that it allows a business to locate and remove these barriers. Knowing how to remove emotional barriers can lead to a powerful marketing campaign.

The marketing dilemma raised by emotional barriers exists for many products and services, but perhaps most importantly in the field of medicine. For example, how many lives might be saved if more people regularly had cancer screenings? Imagine being able to remove emotional barriers and cause people’s procrastination and fear to virtually shatter. This can be achieved through properly conducted emotional attitude surveys and effective utilization of their results in promotion. The following example of a furniture business in New York City illustrates how this works.

Each year in New York, retail furniture sales plummeted between Thanksgiving and Christmas. We wanted our stores to reverse this pattern. Early surveys we conducted revealed that people did not want to shop for themselves during the holidays. Another study determined that the emotional attitude people had toward purchasing goods for themselves during the holiday season ranged between grief and fear. People felt that Christmas had become “over-commercialized and was not the same as it used to be.” We understood that anger, a slightly more positive emotion, arouses response from consumers feeling grief or fear. As a result, we developed a campaign surrounding the emotion of anger and voiced just what people said they believed about shopping at Christmas.

This campaign was labeled “The Infamous Scrooge Campaign”. Homeless individuals were hired off the street and dressed like Scrooge. Loud speakers targeting crowded sidewalks in front of our Manhattan showrooms were set up. Our Scrooges were trained to parade about the showroom windows exclaiming into microphones, “Bah humbug, Christmas has become over commercialized. It’s not the same as it used to be!”

The ensuing campaign generated immediate results. TV stations and newspapers were instantly attracted. One by one they arrived at the main showroom on the east side of Manhattan and filmed one of our Scrooges. It was all over town... on television, in the newspapers. Everywhere people were talking about it. As a result, sales skyrocketed to the highest they had ever been regardless of the time of year and remained strong right through Christmas.

What it takes to learn this approach

You can learn how to uncover emotional attitudes toward the purchase of a product or service and achieve similar results. The surveyor asks a question, observes how the individual responds and notes the observation.

A surveyor requires extensive training to correctly determine emotional responses. Likewise, knowing how to use the results uncovered through this method requires expertise. Business Builders employs these techniques when there is substantial benefit to be gained.

Not all survey methods, however, require this level of expertise. You can write surveys yourself and conduct them by phone. Whatever you are uncertain about concerning your target markets can be formulated into a survey.

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