Sell Dreams Instead of Products
In a world of hugely advanced marketing, how does your company stand out? Sell something bigger than the product itself. Sell a dream.
Attract customers by demonstrating that you are in the game for more than meeting your quarterly sales numbers. This does not mean slap a dreamy slogan on a product and announce that it will change your customer’s life forever.
A cause is not something the marketing department dreams up. A cause embodies the principles and values of an organisations leaders and employees. From the receptionist, to the CEO, employees demonstrate their belief in the cause with their actions every day.
A Few Examples of Businesses and How They Sell Dreams Instead of Products
- Southwest Airlines: It sells a commodity product- airline seats, but ask an employee the company’s cause and they’ll tell you it’s ‘freedom’. Freedom to be an individual, freedom from complicated, expensive and sneaky fares of competing airlines, freedom from the years of legal manoeuvring that nearly prevented the company from starting decades ago in Texas.
- Starbucks: It’s product is coffee, but each Starbucks location is really a meeting point for communities. Starbucks’ cause is strengthening the threads of community.
- Apple: It was the first company to define a personal computer as part of a larger cause. The famous “1984” commercial introducing the Macintosh set new standards in advertising and defining its precedent-setting technology as the antidote to tyranny (in this case, the “Big Brother” of standards-bearer IBM). While Apple may not have made some of the best decisions for making its operating system the dominant force, one of the primary reasons it’s still in business 25 years later is an evangelistic customer base.
How Can You Create and Demonstrate Your Businesses Cause?
Consider these…
- What’s your Businesses cause? More importantly, how do customers say you’re changing the world?
- Define societal issues that affect your customers and prospects. Build plans to support those issues demonstrably and systematically.
- Sell a dream instead of just selling products. Discover how your businesses products and services improve lives and changes the world, no matter how small the “world.”
When it comes to a cause, challenge yourself and your business to think big.
