Unselling

Getting someone to switch to you is totally different from getting someone who's new to the market to start using the solution you offer.

Switching means:

Admitting I was wrong, and, in many cases, leaving behind some of my identity, because my tribe (as I see them) is using what I used to use.

So, if you want to get a BMW motorcycle owner to buy a Harley as his next bike, you have your work cut out for you.

He's not eager to say, "well, I got emotionally involved with something, but I realized that there's a better choice so I switched, I was wrong and now I'm right."

And he's certainly not looking forward to walking away from his own self-defined circle and enduring the loneliness as he finds a new circle.

Which leads to three things to think about:

1. If you seek to grow quickly, realize that your best shot is to get in early, before people have made a commitment, built allegiances and started to engage in cognitive dissonance (since I picked this one, it must be good).
   
   
2. If you are marketing to people who will have to switch to engage with you, do it with intention. Your pitch of, "this is very very good" is insufficient. Your pitch of, "you need something in this category" makes no sense, because I'm already buying in that category. Instead, you must spend the time, the effort and the money to teach me new information that allows me to make a new decision. Not that I was wrong before, but that I was under-informed.
   
   
3. Ignore the tribal links at your peril. Without a doubt, "people like us do things like this," is the most powerful marketing mantra available. Make it true, then share the news.

We invent a status quo every time we settle on something, because we'd rather tell ourselves that we made a good decision than live with the feeling that we didn't.

       

from Seth Godin's Blog on marketing, tribes and respect http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/285179251/0/sethsblog~Unselling.html