By Steve Fodor
In a posting about a year ago, I said that I don’t believe in focus groups as a research methodology for developing a marketing message strategy. And I still don’t. Focus groups are great for learning about opinions, but are often of little value for finding that emotional “hook” for a message that will connect with your target audience.
For finding and developing a message strategy that will connect with customers, we utilize a technique we call Benefit Galvanizing TM. It takes place in a one-on-one setting where a subject is presented with various benefit “statements” that cover a gamut of topics and potential message approaches. Respondents are asked to “react” to each statement (an emotional response) and then rank each statement from most favorable to least favorable (a rational processing of information). That’s precisely how the brain processes information, and it’s why the most effective and memorable marketing messages connect first on an emotional level and then present rational reasons (support).
Recently, we got to practice what we preach. Our local United Way in Marion County, Ohio came to us for help in developing a marketing message to promote education in our community. Though we specialize in business-to-business marketing communications, we’ve been more than glad to help the United Way of Marion County on many occasions over our 25 years in business. Developing a marketing message to promote education is kind of a broad and ambiguous challenge. We needed to find that emotional “hook” that would make a marketing campaign get noticed and connect with students and parents on an emotional level. We’ve always heard things like, “If you don’t work hard at school, you’ll never get a good job.” Or, “If you want a big house and a cool car, you need to work hard in school.”
To some degree, there’s truth in these things we’ve always been told about education. Why, then, don’t more students and parents listen to this seemingly sage advice? Because they’re tuning it out. It’s not connecting. It’s lacking that emotional “hook.” What we found through our Benefit Galvanizing message research is that students and parents really see education as a possession that will provide value over the course of their lives. An education is something no one can ever take away. Education represents hope in an ever-increasingly uncertain world. It’s so much more than just getting “a good job” or obtaining personal possessions. Really, education is something that’s yours. For life.
We’re about to launch this campaign in Marion, Ohio. As far as we know, Marion, Ohio is the only community to combine both programmatic and marketing strategies to help improve educational performance. This is an incredibly worthy cause, and we’re proud to be associated with it.
Education. Yours. For Life. is copyright and logo is registered trademark of Badertscher Communications, Inc.
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