“You Can Observe a Lot by Watching“
Today, I want to start by sharing a story with you from the book When You Come to a Fork in the Road, Take It!: Inspiration and Wisdom From One of Baseball’s Greatest Heroes.
It is a book written by the late, great Yogi Berra (1925-2015), the fifteen-time Major League Baseball All-Star.
In that book, there’s a chapter titled, “You Can Observe a Lot by Watching.”
In that chapter, Yogi Berra tells a story I want to share with you…
“When I was announced as the manager [of the New York Yankees] after the ’63 season, a reporter asked me what I had picked up from Casey Stengel and Ralph Houk, the two managers I’d mostly played for. I said, ‘You can observe a lot by watching.’
Yogi goes on to say, “I always observed a lot. Even Casey used to call me his assistant manager because I was always observing everything. He trusted me to go out and tell a pitcher what he might be doing wrong.
— Yogi Berra in When You Come to a Fork in the Road, Take It!: Inspiration and Wisdom From One of Baseball’s Greatest Heroes.
“As a catcher, you do a lot of watching. You’re the only player who faces his own teammates. You observe the mannerisms and tendencies of opposing hitters and the actions of your pitcher. Observing is learning. If you pay attention, you can learn a lot.”
You might not have realized it, but you just learned a very important lesson that all marketers must learn.
If You Pay Attention, You Can Learn a Lot
There is a lot of marketing going on around us all of the time. Some of it is effective marketing and some of it’s not. Some of it is good and some of it is bad.
But we can always learn something by observing the marketing that’s around us:. We either learn what to do or what NOT to do.
We all just experienced three days of sales: Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday.
Besides getting great deals, we should also make sure to learn (or be reminded of) some great marketing methods.
3 Marketing Lessons You Can Learn From Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday
Today, I want to point out just three of the important marketing lessons that we can learn from these three big sales days.
1. The Power of a Great Offer
If you paid attention over the last few days, then one of the lessons you would discover is the power of a great offer.
All of these big sales days are all about making the best offer possible in order to entice the most customers.
Well, one of the key things an effective direct response ad must have is an offer.
Without an offer, it’s not direct response marketing.
What is an offer? Your offer is what exactly it is that you are offering to your prospects or customers. It’s not just price (see below). It’s any and all that someone is getting when they purchase from you.
If you want to create powerful marketing, then you and your prospects must be absolutely clear on what exactly it is that you’re offering.
And if you want your marketing to be really effective, then your offer can’t be average. You must create a powerful, attractive offer.
The criteria for a powerful, attractive offer: The advertising legend, Claude Hopkins, described how to know if your offer is powerful enough…
“Make your offer so great that only a lunatic would refuse to buy”
— Claude Hopkins
2. The Power of Discounts
Come on. Face it. We all love a good deal.
And if you paid attention over the last few days, then another one of the lessons you would discover is the power of offering a discount.
Discounts are effective because they allows the buyer to purchase something they want and end up keeping more of their hard-earned money in their pockets. And everyone wants to do that!
One of the underlying keys to succeeding on these sales days is to figure out how to give the best discount possible, while at the same time making enough profit.
I don’t have time to go into all the effective ways to offer a great discount, because there’s almost a science to it.
But let me give you three basic ways to offer a discount:
- You can offer a straight discount on a product or service.
- You can offer a discount for buying more than one of a product or service.
- You can offer a discount in the form of a payment plan.
If you want to learn more, I’d encourage you to observe how the stores around you offer discounts and see what you can learn by observing.
3. The Power of Urgency
If you paid attention over the last few days, then there’s one last lesson I want to point out: the power of urgency.
Let’s face it. Getting any of us to take action is very difficult. Even when we know something is important or needed, we still tend to procrastinate and delay doing anything.
What’s the solution? You must limit what you offer to your prospects and customers. I know that sounds counter-intuitive, but it’s the only way to get people to take you up on your offers and discounts.
The two basic ways to use the power of urgency are:
- You must limit the amount of items or services that you offer at a discount.
- You must limit the time period that your offer or discount is available.
When we realize that only a certain amount of people are going to get a particular offer or discount, or when we realize that an offer is only available on a certain day and/or time, THEN we finally decide to stop procrastinating and take action.
That’s why all of these sales limit at least the time period (only on ___ day or days) and some also offer limits in the amount of items/services we can purchase on those days.
How to Apply These Lessons to Your Marketing
Let me be clear, I’m not saying that I like everything about Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday.
I don’t like the frenzy that Black Friday causes. I don”t like that people and/or businesses can become greedy on these days, etc.
But there are still marketing lessons that we can learn from these days that can be applied in ways that don’t go against our consciences or make us feel sleazy.
As 2019 comes to a close and as 2020 is almost upon us, I’d encourage you to think about ways that you can apply these lessons to your marketing.
- What kind of powerful and attractive offers can you create?
- What kind of discounts can you offer to people that help them and still help your business or company to make money?
- What kind of limits can you add to these offers to nudge people to take action, so that you can help them and your business or company can also grow?
And most importantly, how can you creatively COMBINE these three powerful marketing methods?
