Top-of-Mind Awareness

Before we begin, you must under­stand the con­cept that under­lies this book. In today’s soci­ety, I believe we have expe­ri­enced two major shifts that have almost com­pletely rev­o­lu­tion­ized the entire busi­ness landscape.

The first and most impor­tant one is com­pe­ti­tion.

The mere fact that busi­ness is becom­ing increas­ingly hyper­com­pet­i­tive is an under­state­ment. Busi­nesses, par­tic­u­larly home-​​based busi­nesses and self-​​employed pro­fes­sion­als, are grow­ing at an explo­sive rate.

This is not a mere trend, since it was the way things used to be up until the 20^th cen­tury. Whether you were a farmer, a black­smith, or a store­keeper, every­body was an entre­pre­neur in those days. There were no “jobs.”

But when the indus­trial age took over the agrar­ian age, more and more peo­ple started to rely on full-​​time, per­ma­nent, secure, pension-​​oriented careers. Today, “per­ma­nent” jobs are slowly becom­ing mere antiques! For instance, in the 40’s peo­ple held on aver­age two jobs dur­ing their entire life­times. But today, stud­ies shows that the num­ber has risen to 14 and still growing.

The entre­pre­neur­ial boom is far from being just a boom. And the rea­son for this stems from the sec­ond shift that has taken place, which is infor­ma­tion.

Along with the erup­tion in dig­i­tal tech­nol­ogy, multi-​​channel broad­cast­ing, and cel­lu­lar telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions, the Inter­net is sky­rock­et­ing in pop­u­la­tion. The abil­ity to retrieve infor­ma­tion in nanosec­ond speed has caused entire lay­ers of mid­dle man­agers from huge cor­po­ra­tions to fall the way of the dinosaurs.

The infor­ma­tion age notwith­stand­ing, with more and more employ­ers fac­ing dis­grun­tled employ­ees in today’s highly liti­gious atmos­phere, it is safe to con­clude that the “job” is soon becom­ing a thing of the past.

So, what does all this mean? It means that, for a per­son or busi­ness to be able to be — and espe­cially remain — in busi­ness, mar­ket­ing strate­gies must be such that it places them at the top of prospects’ minds at all times. It is not so much to look for more busi­ness but to be the busi­ness of choice.

For every busi­ness or type of prod­uct that exists out there, there are thou­sands of com­peti­tors fight­ing for the same mar­ket. Since the infor­ma­tion rev­o­lu­tion in our knowledge-​​based econ­omy (includ­ing the Inter­net) has helped to edu­cate peo­ple on what’s avail­able, there’s really no longer a need to prospect for and per­suade peo­ple in order to have them “buy into” an idea.

The goal, nowa­days, is to be the one from whom they choose to buy or with whom they choose to do busi­ness — among all other pos­si­bil­i­ties. Mar­ket­ing must there­fore be such that, if and when a prospect needs a par­tic­u­lar prod­uct, one’s firm comes to their minds in an instant.

Stated dif­fer­ently, posi­tion­ing is not to com­pete but to dif­fer­en­ti­ate, to be unique. By doing so, this process helps to pro­vide sort of psy­cho­log­i­cal “anchor” to be placed into the minds of prospects so that they come to choose one busi­ness or prod­uct above all other choices.

“Top-​​of-​​mind aware­ness” is a term orig­i­nally coined by Ellis Verdi, the once pres­i­dent of the National Retail Adver­tis­ers Coun­cil, and the owner of an adver­tis­ing agency in New York. He said that what most peo­ple wrong­fully seek to accom­plish in their pro­mo­tional efforts is to obtain short-​​term cash­flow and not long-​​term results. And they usu­ally accom­plish this by offer­ing sales, pro­mo­tions, dis­counts and price reductions.

As he said at a recent con­fer­ence, “Dis­count­ing is really like a drug. It brings in some busi­ness, and for some it may even bring in a lot of busi­ness. But the effect usu­ally wears off and the com­pany will soon find itself with the need to dis­count fur­ther in order to cre­ate more busi­ness let alone to stay in it.”

Top-​​of-​​mind aware­ness, how­ever, is such that with it there is no need to use price-​​based pro­mo­tional meth­ods. What it does is two, impor­tant things: It psy­cho­log­i­cally impacts peo­ple so that the mere men­tion and knowl­edge of one’s com­pany, prod­uct, or ser­vice inher­ently cre­ates a need for them; and it places one at the top of a spe­cific market’s con­scious­ness so that one is instantly cho­sen when peo­ple want what that per­son or firm has to offer.

“Power Posi­tion­ing” is a term I’ve coined that stands for a per­fect blend of the art of posi­tion­ing and the sci­ence of direct response — the result of cre­at­ing top-​​of-​​mind aware­ness in order to turn you, your busi­ness, or your prod­ucts into pow­er­ful mag­nets in order to attract a bet­ter response from bet­ter leads.

The fol­low­ing com­mand­ments all reflect this pow­er­ful con­cept — and it’s one so sim­ple and yet remark­ably more effec­tive, more afford­able, and of course more effort­less than any other mar­ket­ing strat­egy. Are you ready?

About the Author

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