With Valentine’s Day once more a recent memory, let’s talk about love – and fascination.
In terms of passion for work, you could say that Beethoven was one of the world’s greatest lovers.
His great love of course was music.
At a fairly young age he realized he was going deaf. Can you even begin to imagine how devastating that must have been?
He wrote the Fifth Symphony at about that time. They say the most famous four notes in music, (You know, “Dah, dah, dah, dahhhhhhhhh… Dah, dah, dah, dahhhhhhhhh…”) were the sound of fate knocking at his door.
Ultimately he lost his hearing. But he kept on composing. In his Ninth Symphony aficionados explain you can hear his ultimate victory over fate. At the premiere performance in Vienna the audience gave him five standing ovations, even though he couldn’t hear them. Handkerchiefs flew through the air, hats waved, hands were raised, all so Beethoven could at least see the ovation gestures.
They loved him, and people do to this day.
Now, what does all this have to do with growing your business?
In her book Fascinate, Sally Hogshead lays out seven “fascination triggers”. Every individual or company has them, to varying degrees, in relation to their audience.
When you put them all together you get a fascination profile. Being aware of and consciously touching on the triggers your audience responds to can make the difference between “fascination and failure”.
The triggers she explores are: Lust, Mystique, Power, Alarm, Prestige, Trust, and Vice.
She demonstrates how to broaden and deepen your market appeal by being aware of how your best customers relate to you on each of the triggers. By scoring your business on each one, you can develop a profile to test and put to work in your marketing.
Now we might imagine Beethoven to be above such concerns, but he was keenly interested in audience response. Let’s take ticket sales to the Ninth Symphony for example. On a scale of one to five, with five being the highest, their “Fascination Profile” might look like this:
Power: 3
Lust: 3
Vice: 1
Alarm: 2
Trust: 4
Mystique: 4
Prestige: 5
What triggers does your audience respond to? Which ones could you tweak like a composer to get a rousing ovation (high sales volume) from your audience? How would this set you apart from the competition?
Here are some pilot videos of a campaign I’m working on based on three different triggers driving sales leaders to attend an Infusionsoft demo:
Example 1
Example 2
Example 3
Can you identify which trigger is being used in each case?
Being aware of how to fascinate your audience may give you a subtle but powerful edge. Applied skillfully, this seemingly “magic power” can take mundane purchases like computers and shoes out of the ordinary and into a whole new new realm, where the competition is rendered impotent. Think Apple and Zappo’s.
Of course for you and me, this is all conjecture until we implement something, then track and measure results.
I’ll keep you posted on what I discover – you do the same, okay? Post ’em below!
