Nobel Prize-winning scientist Daniel Kahneman, suggests that each day we experience approximately 20,000 moments.  A moment is defined as a few seconds in which our brain records an experience.  These moments are either as positive, negative or just neutral.  Rarely do we remember neutral moments, but only the positive and negative ones.  This suggests something really big for our marketing.  We are competing for attention with a great deal of moments. If a potential customer sees or hears something about us then:

• If it is something neutral it will not be remembered.  E.g. bland and boring ads, logos, newsletters and the like are not remembered.

• One good experience in a day of 20,000 moments simply is not enough to give us visibility or have us remembered.  We need multiple.

Addressing the first issue, you will often hear marketers talk about ‘cut through’, which means cutting through the noise of messages that are out there.  20 years ago, when I started marketing, we thought there was a lot of noise out there.  This was in the days before the internet, before constant emails, Facebook messages, tweets, 24 hour news, blogs, SMS, webinars, apps and the list goes on.  If we thought we had a lot to deal with back then, well, now it is simply out of control.

What this really means is that you need to make sure everything you do has a message which at least has a chance of cutting through the clutter.  And that means every message, not just one clever line you think up at one individual moment.  You can spend an enormous amount of time emailing, blogging, tweeting and more, without actually creating any moments that are memorable.

This is why most marketers will spend a lot of time talking about differentiation and or your USP (unique selling proposition).  What makes you different from everyone else? Why should I listen to and remember the moments that you provide me out of the 20,000 moments I have in a day?  And, this is perhaps the most difficult challenge of all; as most markets have a large amount of competitors finding something that is truly different about you, and is meaningful to the market you are trying to attract, can be very difficult.

But let’s assume you have spent the time and effort to research your market effectively and identify a good USP or aspect that makes you significantly different.  Now you need to communicate this difference in an effective way.  I do recommend reading books like “Made to Stick” by the Heath Brothers as a way of understanding how to make something memorable.  Using one or more of their six methodologies to make ideas memorable can be very useful for all of your communications points.  Just one of their methods is about telling stories.  Stories can be memorable so if you are trying to make a point about your USP then using a story to illustrate it can be the best method.  This is why you will hear many marketers, and I include myself in this, describing how we build a brand by telling the stories around the brand.  This can be in the terms of customer experiences, case studies and/or the people involved.  It is telling the stories that make ideas memorable and that clearly illustrate your point of difference.

The second issue we have to contend with is that if we experience 20,000 moments a day, then creating one or two good moments every six months just is not going to do the job of creating a customer.  We need consistent communication over a long period of time in order to build a multitude of great moments in our customer’s mind.  And when I say consistent I do mean consistent.  Consistent in message; that is the right story, and consistent in timing; that is often enough.

Consistency of message is absolutely necessary but it is what many companies do poorly.  They put out different messages depending on what they happen to be doing or feeling at the time.  This is a big negative in our customers’ minds.  If they start to perceive negative moments then you are going to have a hell of a time building back up the positive moments. Overcoming this is simply a case of sticking to the USP you had in the first place and building more and more stories of how this works.  These stories become your message.  They can be short or long but they must be consistent.

Creating opportunities to promote your message so that they are hearing it on a consistent basis also becomes an important part of creating positive moments.  If your customers do not hear about you often enough then you simply will not have a big enough share of their positive moments for them to consider you a viable option.  This is where the multitude of means to communicate with customers becomes an advantage.  Email marketing, blogging, tweeting, social media and the like offer more and more chances to communicate and touch base with your target client.  Building a campaign designed to create consistent messages using multiple mediums becomes part of your marketing methodology.

So when Daniel Kahneman suggests our customers experience 20,000 moments per day; you need to truly understand what makes you different and learn how and when to communicate that difference, in order to build enough positive moments to make you and your company positively memorable.

Should you need any guidance on how to communicate your memorable marketing moments please contact Fit 4 Market today on 08 8333 0734.