You can only be successful if people are willing and able to be your customers. They must know about you, and be compelled to act. Malcolm Gladwell asserts in The Tipping Point that “the stickiness factor” is one of three necessary elements for an idea to reach critical mass and tip into the mainstream. Brothers Chip and Dan Heath adopted Gladwell’s term and expounded further on the concept. To be sticky, an idea needs to be:
Simple
Unexpected
Concrete
Credible
Emotional, and involve
Stories
Example: The Power of Stickiness
Which statement below resonates more with you? Which are you more likely to remember?
Our mission is to become the international leader in the space industry through maximum team-centered innovation and strategically targeted aerospace initiatives.
OR
We will “put a man on the moon and return him safely to the earth by the end of the decade.”
One final note: discussed above are ways that you can make your own message resonate with a potential customer or the market. But your company’s success is about far more than making the initial sale. The Cluetrain Manifesto revolutionized marketing with the simple statement that
Markets are conversations.
The authors further assert that there are three primary categories of activity in any marketplace: transaction, conversation and relationship. Ultimately your customers are people, not “targets,” “market niches” or “demographics.” People want to connect and they want to matter. Especially with the internet and social media, they expect to see behind the curtain. And they talk.
If you focus solely on the transaction and miss the conversation and relationship, you lose.
For more information:
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
Malcolm Gladwell
Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
Chip Heath and Dan Heath
The Cluetrain Manifesto (10th Anniversary Edition)
Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls and David Weinberger