About a year ago, I went to see the musical Hamilton in Los Angeles with my girlfriend.
It was a high brow event, with people paying as much as $500-$1000 a ticket to see the show. (Luckily we’d managed to snag tickets for only $180, but it still wasn’t what I’d call a cheap night out.)
The show was great, and afterwards, I officially had bragging rights that I had seen it.
As we left the Pantages theatre, I was surprised to see a line forming in the street. At the front of the line was a hotdog vendor serving $3 hotdogs to a hungry crowd.
What struck me at that moment was the contrast. These people had come from paying top dollar to sit in a posh theatre, and now they were lining up for a street hotdog at 11pm.
Why? Because they were hungry.
This could be the most important lesson I’ve learned in marketing: find a crowd that is hungry for what you have, then stand in front of them.
A hot dog for a hungry person
Now, let me come clean. This idea isn’t new. In fact, it was Gary Halbert who taught it in his newsletter (although he used hamburgers as an example). But that night at the Pantages I saw it first hand. High society men and women, dressed to the nines, chomping on hot dogs on a street corner.
It made me realize that before I do anything else in business, I need to make sure I am standing in front of someone who is ‘hungry’ for what I have to offer.
Your business is not for you
When you start a business, it’s because you want to make some money. Yes, we all have altruistic desires to change the world. Yup, we all want to create something innovative and disruptive. I get that.
But, truth be told, we want to get rich, too.
So here’s the fundamental problem of a business: you need people to buy what you offer for more than it costs you to make it. If you can do that, you make a profit. If you can’t, then you close up shop.
The only difference between a business that makes a profit compared to one that doesn’t is how many ‘hungry’ people they can get in front of.
Everyone values differently
I believe many business owners miss the core of what they are in business for: to provide something specific that their customer values.
Now here’s what’s interesting… not every one of your customers will value the same thing. Each of them will have their specific reasons for wanting what you offer.
In other words, they have a unique way of valuing. Their method of valuing what do matters, because if you mold your business around it, you are more likely to make them want to buy.
This is where marketing steps in. And I don’t mean textbook, theoretical marketing, I mean real-world marketing.
Marketing like a traveling salesman
I’ve always viewed marketing as taking your product or service into the market. Like a traveling salesman venturing into a town, you set up shop in one location, hoping to gain some interest. But, if nobody buys, you don’t just sit there, you try another spot, or you move to another town.
Today because of the internet you don’t even need to move towns, you can just shift your adwords campaigns or keywords. You can reword your website, and improve the branding.
If you are really smart, you will work hard on creating a truly valuable product that is built around your customers’ hunger.
One of the best questions I’ve learned to ask myself is ‘what does my customer value?’ and then try to write out every single answer I can think of. I’ll go deep into the psychology, as well as the most simple, obvious things. Get them all down, and be acutely aware of which ones matter to the majority of the people you sell to.
Then, refine your marketing strategy to include more about the aspects that they value.
Doing this is like setting up a hotdog stand outside a theatre late at night. It will make people want to buy from you, and line up to do it.