How to “get the word out” when no one’s listening
Photo by Felix Koutchinski on Unsplash
‘How do I get the word out?’
Many business owners are obsessed with this question.
As if the only barrier to growing a business is awareness. As if anyone with a wallet walks straight into a shop the minute they hear about it.
It’s the wrong question.
Recently a friend told me about a business that was struggling to ‘get the word out’ about a new brand of gin they’d created. Small batch, delicious gin with stunning packaging.
Unfortunately, it’s not enough to shout about how good your gin is. Because no one is listening. So what would do you do?
It got me thinking about what they could do instead, which lead me to these three unconventional steps. They can work for any business, but here we’re talking gin.
Tell less people, not more.
It’s not what you tell them, it’s what they tell themselves that matters.
The value is not inside the bottle.
1. Tell less people, not more
Who’s it for?
The objective is not to make people fall in love with the product. The objective is to find people who already love it.
It’s not about converting beer drinkers into gin drinkers. That is a long, hard (and expensive) road. Too many creators have run out of cash chasing the end of that rainbow.
The goal is to FIND THE GIN LOVERS.
And weirdly, it works better with less people, not more.
A handful of die-hard customers who spend money beats a million followers on Instagram that never buy.
Kevin Kelly’s famous 1000 true fans nailed it in 2008. That’s still the best place to start.
Once that sinks in, it will change everything. And everything else flows from there.
To illustrate, let’s play a little game of question and answer…
Who is this gin for?
“It’s for everyone and anyone!”
Okay. So it’s for primary school kids too?
“No, of course not.”
Good. Silly question. But an important first step. This gin is not actually for everyone.
Okay, this might be another silly question, but let’s try this. Would a 21 year old non-drinker enjoy this gin?
“Well I hope they would like it, but they might not get the subtlety of the flavours straight away.”
Okay, we’ll take that as a no.
If you were down to your last hundred bucks and it would get any 50 people of your choice in a room to sample your gin, would you want all of them to be 21 year old non- drinkers?
“Probably not.”
If we drew a line in the sand. On one side are all the people who love, love, love gin. It’s their favourite drink. They have several different styles at home. And on the other side of the line are all the people who hate gin. Maybe they sniffed some cheap and nasty stuff once and decided it’s not for them. Maybe they like beer instead. Maybe they don’t even drink at all. Which group, on which side of the line, is more likely to enjoy your gin?
“The gin lovers.”
And if you offered an incredible deal, like two bottles for the price of one, to all the people on the other side of the line — the gin haters — how do you think they would react?
“They would turn it down.”
So we’ve got two important assertions. First, that this gin is not for everyone. And second, that people who already like gin are more likely to love this gin than people who hate gin.
Do it for the believers
It’s important that we acknowledge and embrace these truths. Because soon there will be a poster to print, or a website to build, or maybe even a music festival to sponsor. And each time, the question must be asked: who’s it for?
Is the poster for people who love my gin? Is the website for people who love my gin? Will the people at the music festival love my gin? If the answer is yes, go for it! And make the poster, the website, the music festival promotion only for those people. Ignore the rest.
This eliminates second guessing and avoids pandering to the masses.
It’s okay if your uncle Brian doesn’t like the poster. Good. He’s got bad taste, he hates gin and it’s not for him.
“When we try to please everyone, we end up pleasing no one… least of all ourselves”
— Simon Sinek
Serving the believers is more rewarding than chasing the sceptics
Of course there’s no guarantees here. We know that even if we find one hundred gin lovers, we’re not going to sell one hundred bottles of gin. Some people — probably most people — are going to say no. That’s okay. That’s the game.
But it’s more rewarding because we know that we can have a genuine conversation with those people. Value goes both ways. We can listen and we can learn from them too.
If they’re our dream customer, the more we know about them, the better off we are. And if we stick at it, if we keep listening to those people — the people we made this for — we know some of them are going to give it a shot.
We also know it would be a waste of time talking to the beer lovers, or the temperance society or the gin haters club. We don’t want their opinion. It’s not for them.
So what we have to do is find the gin lovers, and keep showing up.
Sure, that’s a smaller group than ‘everybody’. But that’s the point. Now instead of slaving to convert the non-believers, the job is to find out what those dream customers really want.
2. It’s not what you tell them, it’s what they tell themselves that matters
What do they want?
We all buy for different reasons. For fun. To get out of pain. To solve a problem. For status.
Why would anyone buy this gin? What do they really want?
It might help to ask them. Find them at a bottle shop, or find them online. Talking to them is mandatory.
What’s going on inside their heads? What stories do they tell themselves?
Let’s look at three hypothetical buyers to illustrate the potential differences.
The risk avoider
The story in her head: “I only like my favourite gin. I always buy the same gin because I know I like it. So I don’t need to try yours.”
Hey, spending money on a new gin she might not like is risky, so although she is a gin lover, she’s already found her favourite and she’s not looking for anything else.
It might help to reverse the risk. Perhaps offer a money-back guarantee so she can’t lose. Or a free tasting at the local bottle shop so she can try before she buys. Or maybe she’s not worth the effort, so the focus and energy can move on to the next group.
The explorer
The story in his head: “I like to explore different kinds of gin. I’m always trying something new because that’s how I find something special.”
Maybe he enjoys having something others can’t or don’t have.
FOMO (fear of missing out) can work for him. Maybe there’s a limited release — get it now or miss out forever. Maybe an exclusive, like being first in line to sample the limited seasonal range.
If this guy is interested in discovering new things, then all the effort goes to listening to him so it can be put on a plate for him.
The connoisseur
The story in her head: “I know gin. I only drink the proper stuff.”
Being a gin person means she knows the pretenders from the contenders. She probably enjoys the feeling (status) of knowing more than her friends.
How do we increase her status and help set her even further apart? Can we give her some little facts peculiar to this gin so she can showcase her superior knowledge? Can we give her an exclusive opportunity? Can we invite her to an exclusive tasting event where she can help create a new range?
Feed her ego, help elevate her status. Help her become the best gin snob she can be.
What stories are customers telling themselves?
These are all hypothetical people. The real answers will be uncovered by the research. Knowing the customer intimately makes reaching them a whole lot easier. And knowing what they’re telling themselves, makes the message easier too.
3. The value is not inside the bottle
Sorry to say but it’s not about the gin.
All the love and care, and even the best ingredients in the world will not shift the inventory if there is no desire.
Take the Campbell Soup Company for example. They’re valued at over $12 billion apparently. Obviously, they do more than soup, but how did they get there? Did they have the best soup recipe? No, their ingredients feature a long list of things that sound like they belong under the kitchen sink, not on the dinner table.
The reason Campbells grew is because of how their stories made people feel. They showed us cold and sick people smiling after a hot cup of soup. But they weren’t talking to the sick person. They weren’t promising to cure a cold.
They were talking to the carer in the kitchen (who probably also took care of the shopping). And the message was clear: if you’re a good mum, if you want them to smile and appreciate you like this, you’ll give them Campbells soup when they’re cold. Like it or not, they weren’t buying soup, they were buying that feeling because they wanted that story to be true for them too.
Story is what transformed a $1.4 million artwork into a $25.4 million artwork in a matter of seconds.
Story is why GM fans don’t buy Fords.
And story is why the believers will drive past several bottle shops to get to the only place in town that stocks a certain gin.
Tell a story about the founders, or the place the juniper berries come from. Don’t try to convince them it’s better. Simply tell them why it’s unique.
Knowing who it’s for and what stories they tell themselves makes this part easier.
A story should speak directly to the dream customer and make them feel that with this gin, they can be the person they want to become. The answer to that might be inside the bottle, it might be about the particular blend of botanicals, but it probably isn’t.
So, how do you get the word out?
It’s a good question, just not a good place to start.
Start by telling less people, not more. Find the ones most likely to buy and focus like a hawk on them. Then work out what stories they’re telling themselves. That’s more important than pushing a message onto them.
Once those first two parts are figured out, craft a compelling story that helps them become who they want to be, because that’s where value is created, not inside the bottle.
After that, getting the word out becomes a lot easier.
