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Binary Marketing

Charen Smith

June 20, 2008

In my youth, my father warned me about people offering you two options. Usually, they’re using two options to keep you from thinking about a third or fourth option that would be more to your advantage and more to their disadvantage. Its solid advice. Still, when it comes to the customers you do business with on a day to day basis, there really are only two basic flavors.

The first group are the customers that you’ve established a relationship with, good or bad. These customers either like your company and its products, have established a loyalty to your brand, have established a relationship with your sales and support staff or, in the case of the bad relationships, have sworn off your company or its products or who have zero interest in your offerings at any price. Its good to appeal to each group from time to time to either maintain positive feelings or to try and build bridges and mend fences with the other group.

The second group are the ones you’re going to be focusing the majority of your ads towards. These are the customers that have at least a passing interest in your offerings, but need to be sold on it. That’s right, the I’m talking about the modern, ad savvy consumer who is looking at the bottom line and is solely driven by self interest. These are the folks that will be scrutinizing your color printing with a critical eye and asking why they should buy from you. When you design your print ads you should keep this in mind and try to address one or more of the following in your efforts to convince this group to buy.

Price - This group can get your products anywhere at full retail price and maybe the guy down the block is more convenient to stop at on their way home. Undercutting the guy down the block can sway them to take that detour by your shop.

Free goods - Cheap is great, but free is better still. You would be surprised the lengths some people will go if they think they can get something for nothing. Even if the promotional item isn’t something they would ever pay for, the idea of getting it for free is compelling. Promotional items can effectively double the perceived value of your product.

Limited offers - If you emphasize that your discounts or offers have a limited duration, you will create urgency in this group. This also creates a break in their routine schedule, since they have to mentally note when your offer expires so they don’t miss out.

Repetition - This ones easy. How many pop songs have you had stuck in your head for weeks because of how often they were played on the radio? Just like it drives CD sales, repetition can drive your marketing message deep into the psyche of your hard sell customers, subconsciously compelling them to remember you when they are ready to buy.

It’s not always possible, but your goal should be moving people out of group two and into the group one category. Even though they will likely always be looking for the best product for the least money, if you can establish that you always have the best deals, even if it isn’t always the case, you can establish a pattern in their buying routine that will make your company the place they go to first for their needs.

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