Everyone who has ever run a business has wrestled with the problem of acquiring and retaining customers. You have a great product or service at a decent price, but the place remains quiet, the cash box filled with nothing but cobwebs and frustration. The problem is one of messaging. How do you craft a message that will stick in customers' minds, and attract new ones along the way?
In their bestselling book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, Chip and Dan Heath analyze the characteristics of good messaging, and they provide a framework to help anyone craft an idea that will resonate, stick, and bring customers through the doors.
The framework is called SUCCES, an acronym that stands for Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, and Emotional Stories. Crafting your message with these characteristics allows the message to resonate with your customers, helping it stick in their memory.
Craft your message so it's simple and easy to understand. Everyone remembers the ad campaign "Got Milk?" It's a simple, two-word question, and something everyone seems to ask when passing by the dairy cooler. Its simplicity helps it stick in the mind. Our actions are governed by our thoughts, so what we do is usually what's in our mind at any particular moment. A simple, easy to remember message is more likely to be remembered and acted upon later.
Make your message unexpected. Wally Amos, of Famous Amos cookies, started out as a talent agent. He would bring a plate of fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies to meetings with potential clients. The aroma of fresh-baked cookies in the air was a delightful surprise for the artists Amos wanted to represent. Everyone likes a warm cookie, and that one little unexpected gesture helped Amos connect with potential clients on a personal level. Eventually, it led to a top position in the agency for Amos, and ultimately to a new and profitable business.
Make your message concrete. Freedom, beauty, happiness, romance, and wealth are all things we strive after, but very often these ideas look very different to different people. Craft your message with specific, concrete details, enabling your customers to form a picture in their mind. Instead of saying "Our luggage is quite durable," Samsonite showed how it could be tossed around by a gorilla without taking significant damage. People won't remember "durable," but they will remember the gorilla, allowing them to infer that Samsonite luggage is durable on their own. The old writing adage "show, don't tell," is another way to remember it.
Make your message credible. Back up your claims with evidence. Pepsi did this quite effectively during the cola wars with their "Pepsi Challenge" campaign. In the ads, people would taste-test Pepsi and Coke, and decide which they liked better. Naturally, more people chose Pepsi. The ads encouraged viewers to run a similar test and decide for themselves which cola was preferrable. The campaign narrowed the gap between the two rival brands, thanks to the credibility of the message.
Craft your message as a story that conveys emotion. Saint Jude's Hospital does amazing work treating children stricken with cancer, but if they said, "every day we help children stricken with cancer, so give us money," the message might not resonate. People might nod their heads and say "That's great. One of these days I might do that." Saint Jude's found a far more effective way to ask for donations, and that's with personal stories. Each ad is a story about a single child. The parent describes the child, their likes, their hopes, their dreams, and then tells the story of that child's cancer journey. The result is people tearfully reaching for their wallet instead of forming a few good intentions.
A good message sticks in the mind and leads to action. Chip and Dan Heath's SUCCES framework is one way to ensure that your message sticks in the mind of potential customers, spurring them to action. Perhaps, with a little effort and creativity, SUCCES could lead to…success.
You're welcome, Heath Brothers. You can have that one for free.