Kevin Allen explains the big drivers behind buyer behavior and how ad professionals can personally connect with those drivers to create breakthrough ideas and win the pitch.

You need to understand that behind every decision
lies a hidden agenda.

There are no magic tricks or hypnotics to persuade people to do what you say. Rather, behind every decision the average person makes to buy something — whether a product or service, your argument or an idea — is an unspoken emotional motivation. I call this the hidden agenda. Tap this, connect to it — and you will have people saying yes.

Three types of agendas.

Kevin goes on to explain the three types of hidden agendas customers and clients have: Wants, Needs and Values. In our work at Hero, we focus on similar drivers we call Needs, Interests and The Why.

Deep desires, often unspoken — like the desire to be recognized, to feel appreciated, to create something, to be admired, to lead, to feel safe and secure — are fundamental to any business decision. The business issue and the hidden agenda are intertwined.

Once you understand the hidden agenda, you use your own ambition, abilities and values to discover where the agenda overlaps with the client’s business problem. After that, all you need is inspired creative and rock-solid pitch.

Get your pitch on.

Kevin’s explanation makes it all sound easy. Of course, we know its not. But read it, his ideas will certainly help the next time you are the pitchman.

Read it all here.

All this talk of Create Denver Week reminded me of this great post from Jessica Hagy, Six Enemies of Greatness and Happiness.

A big part of Create Denver is supporting local creatives—artists, designers, musicians, everyone—by helping them gain the skils and make the connections needed to sustain their craft. That is a huge helping hand to people who aren’t always naturals in the art of business. But there are even greater challenges to a successful creative career that have nothing to do with cash-flow, taxes or contracts.

There are the internal challenges we all face when we’re trying to realize our creative vision. Jessica lists the six enemies of greatness as: availability, ignorance, committees, comfort, momentum and passivity. Read the post for her insights on each.

Maybe you’re too comfortable to be great.

As an interesting side note. Forbes pooled readers of the Jessica’s article, asking them what is the biggest obstacle to greatness. The results are interesting.

Create Denver Weekstarted last night with a launch party at Battery 621. If you don’t know about Create Denver, this is your weekend to experience the diversity and energy of the Mile High creative community.

Create Denver seeks to strengthen the overall health and vitality of Denver by supporting the growth and development of the creative sector, including individual artists and creative enterprises such as film, music, art galleries, art districts, fashion and graphic design.

Check out all that is happening this weekend.

The launching of Catalyst Ale. Created by Wynkoop Brewing just for Create Denver.	The Hello Denver font by Good Apples. A free, custom typeface for all of us to use in our create pursuits.
Create Denver Expo at the Convention Center on Saturday.

Here’s a great post from Jessica Hagy on the surprising similarities between marketing and crime. Of course, it includes Jessica’s witty and poignant Ven diagrams.

Messaging, marketing, and personal actions (criminal or not) are simple human behaviors. We all want need to be in the right place with the right message at the right time. It’s as true for meeting your soul mate as it is for meeting your quarterly sales goals.

Read the whole post on Forbes.com

Online marketers, B2C and B2B, need to continue investing to create a differentiated brand. The reason is simple, at the core of all the content marketing, social media and lead nurturing you are doing today, is your brand. In fact, your brand promise is the foundation of your content strategy. Without infusing the strategy, and the content that follows, with the voice of your brand, it has little chance of producing the clicks, likes and leads you seek.

Brand’s connection to content.

There is a lot of content in the world. Nearly every business is creating something. Much of it is unfocused and uninteresting. It’s not that this stuff lacks information, it doesn’t. It lacks personality, a point of view and a focus on the needs and interests of the reader.

When a brand speaks with personality and empathy for its customers we often describe its voice as “authentic” or “honest”. You get the feeling they know you and are speaking, not to some generic anyone, but just to you. So, how do you create that quality in your content? It starts with knowing your brand promise.

What’s a brand promise?

 A brand promise is a statement of enduring, relevant and distinctive benefits. That’s a wonky way to say it’s a compelling sentence that wraps up what you do, how you do it and who you do it for. It’s the guiding brand-ideal your customers connect with and understand. It’s how your customers know you care about them most of all. Simon Sinek calls this statement your why. His TED talk on the subject is a great place to start when you begin working on your brand promise.

A real-world example.

Here’s a real-world example from Nike. Nike’s brand promise is:

To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world.

To see this in action, visit Nike’s #MakeItCount campaign. There you will find exactly what was promised to the world’s athletes, inspiration and innovation. You’ll see it, and feel it, resonating throughout every design and content element.

Now, I know what you’re going to say, “It’s easy for them, they’re a big brand with deep pockets.” That’s true. But this kind of authentic connection between brand and content is not beyond your reach. Again, it starts with knowing your brand promise.

What’s your brand promise?

Here’s an easy-to-use formula for writing your brand promise. I learned this formula reading Brian Solis’s book The End of Business As Usual. If you have difficulty, refer back to Simon Sinek’s TED talk. That will keep you in the right frame of mind.

brand promise formula
Verb (how) — Target (who) — Outcome (what)

Building a content strategy.

I’ll assume you’ve got your brand promise written and know your who, what and how. Engaging, effective content is not written for a generic anyone, it’s created with a specific someone in mind—your who. It connects with that someone because it’s tuned to their specific needs and interests. Your strategy starts to really take shape when you translate those needs and interests into the topics of your content.

Stay tuned. Attend my workshop.

I’ll dive further into planning content themes and topics in my next post. If you want to get up to speed faster, then consider attend my next workshop on May 16th at Creative Density in Denver, CO. In the 90 min workshop I’ll teach you a framework for developing content themes and topics that connect with your ideal client, build your brand and create engagement.

Related posts:

Be strategic about marketing content.

photo by: A. Drauglis, Furnituremaker

This Friday, art galleries across Denver will open their doors to lively gatherings of art goers, just like they do every month for the First Friday Art Walk. This year, though, denizens of the arts will have a new guide for their First Friday stroll, the Denver Gallery Guide. The Gallery Guide brings together all the art neighborhoods of Denver into one interactive map that lets you explore the venues in each area. The site is beautifully designed, fast and intuitive to use. It’s been awhile since I’ve seen a better use of a map metaphor as the main navigation.

Cudos go to the design team as the site has been included as an Honoree in the 2012 Webby Awards. Created by Arts and Venues Denver with support from Create Denver and Visit Denver, the site quality of the site speaks volumes about the quality of the Denver arts and cultural community.

I don’t know who specifically was on the design and development team for this project. If you do, leave a comment their names so we can give credit where its due.

Each month we compile a list of our favorite articles. The arrival of Spring to the Rockies has us thinking about planting seeds for future growth and how the landscape of digital marketing is changing. If Spring is your time for putting things to order, then check out this Tumblr-things neatly organized. It may inspire you to clean out that closet, drawer or idea file you avoided all winter.

April ’12 issue of Big Ideas & Useful Stuff.

An art director I worked with long ago used to say he didn’t like graphic design, because design is never done.

“I can always find something to make better. The only way I know I’m done, is when the client says ‘Approved’”.

Over the years, I’ve felt the same frustration Rob did. Back when graphic design meant printing, advertising meant TV commercials and product design meant factory manufacturing, there was a high cost for design changes. And few companies valued an iterative design process. It was a “one and done” mentality. Digital changed all that.

Freedom to change.

The 8 page glossy-brochure is no longer the primary marketing piece, it’s a company’s website. Video production has moved from the studio to our lap top, literally. And software that used to be sold on disc (in a box), is now delivered through the App Store. As our technology has improved, digital has grown and the cost of production has come down. In many cases, to near nothing. So how are you taking advantage of this freedom-to-change?

One-and-done is over.

Digital production, digital creation, has opened up the door to continuos, iterative design. A chance to leave the world of “one and done” and never come back. As a digital design studio, Hero has always led its clients in this direction. Today, most companies are working to change their mindset and take advantage of the opportunity. But, it’s not easy. And it’s good to have examples of success and how-to’s as guidance.

Iteration inspiration.

Here are two great articles that show how you can continuously improve the design of your brand, product or service. They prove that even the biggest and best companies in the world are figuring things out as they go, and that gives you permission to do so, as well.

4 Key Insights From The
57-Day, Blitzkrieg Redesign
Of Google+

via Fast Company - After a mere 6 months on the market, Google released their first major redesign of Google+. If you check your profile now, you should see the latest version. And if your taste is anything like ours, you’ll agree that it feels better in just about every way… Co.Design talked to Google+ lead designer Fred Gilbert to unpack the subtle brilliance behind their awesome redesign–a redesign that was completed in less than two months–and his notes are full of lessons that could hone the experience of almost any product.

Read it all here.

9 Principles For Great Branding By Design

via Fast Company - We all know great design has a critical role to play in building a great brand. But how do we go about making that happen? I recently had the opportunity to speak to three top designers about that very question… Through these conversations, it became clear that the link between design and branding is important, and that having a top design team is to crucial to having a winning brand.

Read it all here.

 Tell me your thoughts.

I’d love to hear what you think about iterative design and the shift in mindset that makes it valuable. Drop a comment in the box.

Photo lovingly created by looseends

A business blog, though, is merely a means to an end, a way to share useful, interesting information that people connect with. Blog posts drive conversations, conversations are how you engage with people, and engaging with people is the only way your business will survive in the social-media-disrupted world we now live in.

No traditional sales funnel.

“The Internet has fundamentally transformed the way people discover, share, connect and shop. It’s time for marketers to transform the way they connect and communicate with their customers—and potential customers—as well. From inboundsales.net

In his book The End of Business as Usual, Brian Solis writes about the emergence of the connected customer, a new segment of our shopping, buying, donating population. These savvy, networked customers have evolved past the traditional sales funnel to a buying cycle that is driven by search, social media and digital experiences—all of which rely on content to start conversations and create engagement.

The first look is online.

According to the The End of Business as Usual, when today’s connected customer is looking for a product or service they will start at the website of a known brand only 50% of the time.

• Company website – 50%
• Search engine – 48%
• Friends and peers – 30%
• Family – 22%
• Social networks – 20%

To remain relevant and successful, your business must have a growing online presence in these places. Because today, this is where your customers are a looking for what you sell. And, they can either find you in the search results, or your competitors.

Now, you might say to me, “My customers aren’t using social media and search to find me, I’m in a relationship business”. To which I answer:

1. 1 of every 7.7 people on the planet are using Facebook. Social media is a part of your customers’ lives.
   
2. As our young population matures, average U.S. age is 35, tomorrow’s decision makers will not know a business landscape without the internet.
   
3. As these technologies become embedded in our communication devices and services, they will become the norm, not the exception.
   
4. If your customers actually aren’t digitally savvy yet, great! That gives you time to grow your online footprint before they arrive.

Content is the driver.

The driver of  your online presence is the content you create. Content you’ll use to share your expertise, market your product and build your brand. Make it searchable, useful, sharable and frequent, and it will help your business grow.  Types of content can include:

• Website pages
• Blog posts
• Social media posts and status updates
• Videos
• Ebooks, Reports, White Papers
• Webinars
• Newsletters

But with so much riding the effectiveness of  your blog posts, ebooks and webinars, it’s time to be more purposeful about the content you create.

Be strategic about content.

When I talk about content strategy, I don’t mean deciding on your next blog topics or creating an editorial schedule. Those things are planning. What I want you to think about is creating a strategic framework to guide all the stuff you create.

To do this you have to answer three fundamental questions:
Q – Who is searching for me?
A - Know your ideal client.

Q – What are they looking for?
A – Know their needs and their interests.

Q – How are they finding you?
A – Know the keywords they will use.

The answers to these questions will become the foundation of your content strategy. Understanding your ideal client, you will know who you are creating content for. Knowing their needs and interests will tell you what topics will be most engaging. Discovering the keywords used to find products like yours will help you build good search results for your blog posts, ebooks and videos.

In an upcoming post, I’ll talk more about defining your ideal client and the role of branding in the development of your content strategy.

Design is a weird word.

The word design is used so often and so broadly today that it’s become almost impossible to define. In fact, if I talk about design, you won’t really know what I mean unless I qualify it by saying WEB design or FURNITURE design. And even then, I’m still speaking in broad, abstract terms.

Design has moved to the center.

Design, in all it’s forms, has moved to the center of our economy and culture through companies like Target, Apple, Google, Facebook, Virgin, IBM and Ikea. These companies have increased America’s design IQ. Peoples’ everyday lives are surrounded by good design—design that is user-centered and tuned to their needs. People are happy to be the center of attention and they’ve come to expect this from every brand they consider.

Startup companies understand this best. They strategically place design at the core of their business. In order to disrupt the market and find their success they know design is essential for creating a brand based on a good customer experience. Startups such as Pinterest, Evernote and Nest are proving the value of this approach.

Defining design.

So, making design a core part of your business is becoming a Key Success Factor. But, if you don’t have the experience and understanding, design feels too abstract and too undefined  to consider. Never fear. Recent BFA graduate Wells Riley has come to your rescue. His project, Startups This is How Design Works, will give you the design primer you need and always wanted.

Riley’s site answers questions such as ‘What is good design?’ and ‘How do decision-makers value design?’. It also presents Dieter Rams’ Ten Principles of Good Design and definitions of today’s dominant design fields—graphic design, interaction design and industrial design.

Companies like Apple are making design impossible for startups to ignore. Startups like Path, Airbnb, Square, and Massive Health have design at the core of their business, and they’re doing phenomenal work. But what is ‘design’ actually? Is it a logo? A WordPress theme? An innovative UI?

It’s so much more than that. It’s a state of mind. It’s an approach to a problem. It’s how you’re going to kick your competitor’s ass. This handy guide will help you understand design and provide resources to help you find awesome design talent.

If you are struggling to understand the meaning and value of the D-word, then Startups This is How Design Works will read like a book of wisdom and put you on the path to enlightenment.

Read other ruminations on the value of design in my post, Graphic Design Is Not Enough.