Risk & Business Magazine Miller Insurance Magazine Winter 2018 | Page 23

SLOW MARKETING
snack marketing, tasked with selling these
familiar little packs to airline procurement
departments?
(Side note: Is B2B Snack Mix Marketer a
career choice? I want to believe yes.)
SLOW MARKETING MOMENT
FOR B2B SNACK MIX MARKETER
(SMMB2BSMM): I want to drive awareness
of and interest in our new Tastee-brand
passenger snack mix to all the major
carriers.
SO WHAT?
SMMB2BSMM:
Because our Tastee-brand snack mix
features high-quality nourishment for your
passengers. It’s a perfect blend of salty and
savory, packaged both conveniently and
attractively. And it’s shelf-stable—lasting for
literally years inside in-flight trolley carts. It
won’t rot or turn stale or rancid.
SO WHAT?
SMMB2BSMM:
Because bad, inedible snacks will inspire
your customers to mock you on social
media. Flying literally sucks: They already
are poised to hate you. Bad snacks could be
the last straw that might inspire a negative
hashtag. Which could trend.
SO WHAT?
SMMB2BSMM:
Because that’ll be embarrassing to you, Ms.
Carrier Procurement. More importantly,
your airline brand will suffer because of
your subpar snacks. And you’ll suffer when
the Director of Procurement scapegoats
you.
SO WHAT?
SMMB2BSMM:
Because suffering is… umm… bad. And
jobless is… debilitating.
You get the idea. So the our Slow Marketing
Moment B2B Snack Mix Marketing Writer
might get to something like this:
Our new Tastee snack blend will do more
than just nourish your bored passengers.
The blend will delight your passengers
because it’s a cut above typical airline
fare—so much so that they’ll maybe be
inspired to share the good vibes on social
media. They’ll Instagram selfies with the
fun packaging (did you notice the packets
are square, like Instagram?)
Happier customers make for more brand
loyalty, and more brand loyalty makes for
a more successful company and a happier
work culture.
You’ll be a hero! You’ll get your picture on
the break room bulletin board! Your own
parking spot! The works!
It takes you and your brand out of the
story—and puts your audience at the heart
of it. It makes your customer the hero of
your story.
And, ironically—and this is the wonderful
part—slowing down enough to ask and
answer that series of questions will get you
results faster and more successfully.
B2B SNACK MIX MARKETING IS A
RIDICULOUS PREMISE
Or is it? We’ll Instagram literally anything.
Snacks. And how much they suck. Or not. At its heart the question embraces the
philosophy of what the very best marketing
really is: understanding our customers and
helping them make the best decisions by
framing things on their terms, not ours.
Whether you sell snack mix or motor oil,
cacti or kittens: This “so what?” question
is the Slow Marketing Moment makes you
hit pause. And that’s true whether you sell apps, apples,
appliances, apparatuses, airplanes… or the
snack mix they carry. +
And embracing that Slow Marketing
Moment can help you reframe a product or
service as a clear value for the customer. It
becomes a shortcut—a kind of “hack”—to
achieving empathy with customers.
If you slow down and ask yourself this
question before starting every marketing
program and every piece of content and
everything you write as part of that
program, you will serve your customers—to
the benefit of your brand.
But you’ll do that by avoiding droning on
about your brand. You’ll avoid making your
brand the focus instead of the things that
matter to the people you are trying to reach.
(Really, they don’t care about you all that
much.)
You’ll put your products in the context of
your customers’ lives… instead of the other
way around.
EMPATHY, HUMILITY
The so what question is an empathy
shortcut, and it’s also a humility shortcut.
ANNHANDLEY.COM
Ann Handley is a Wall Street Journal bestselling author who speaks worldwide about how
businesses can escape marketing mediocrity to ignite tangible results. IBM named her one
of the 7 people shaping modern marketing. Ann is a digital marketing pioneer and the Chief
Content Officer of MarketingProfs, the leading marketing training company with more than
600,000 subscribers. She is the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Everybody Writes: Your
Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content , and co-author of Content Rules: How to
Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers
and Ignite Your Business . Her books have been translated into 19 languages, including Turkish,
Korean, Italian, Chinese, and Japanese.
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