13 Key Insights Into Prospect Psychology

Creative entrepreneurs often approach the whole game of product creation and then selling the created products it in the wrong ways. To build a truly world-class product, you must know who you are building it for and develop an outside-in approach if you want to hit consistency. This means understanding the psychology of your potential prospects.

According to positioning theory the easy way to get into a persons mind is to be first.

There’s a number of other insights that are incredibly important to consistently implement if creative entrepreneurs want to in the close quarters contact sport that is business. Here’s 13 Key Insights Into Prospect Psychology from the book Positioning:

1. In order to sell effectively you must enter the conversation your prospect is already having in their own mind. Write and advertise in your prospects language, not your own. To do this, you must research your prospects in-person, and through statical analysis build a customer avatar to speak directly to in your advertising.
2. Advertising has entered an era where strategy is king, not copy poetry or image identification of the late Breakthrough Advertising and Ogilvy eras.
3. In the positioning era, it’s not enough to invent or discover something new. It may not even be necessary. You must, however, be first to get into the prospects mind.
4. Poetry in advertising and copy is dead.
5. For many products today, one roadway to success is to look at what your competitors are doing and then subtract the poetry or creativity which has become a barrier to getting the message into the mind. With a purified and simplified message, you can then penetrate the prospects mind.
6. Modern positioning marketing strategy is so crystal clear that legacy copywriting masters wouldn’t see it as advertising.
7. Strange things have been happening in American advertising – it’s becoming less poetic and more effective.
8. The ultimate objective of all marketing: the human mind.
9. One prime objective of all advertising is to heighten expectations.
10. According to Harvard psychologist Dr. George A. Miller, the average human mind cannot deal with more than 7 units at a time, which is why 7 is a popular number to work with.
11. Humans have developed Brand Ladders to cope with the complexity of the marketplace.
12. To successfully position your product you must relate successfully to your competitor, with real-world data.
13. To find a unique position, you must ignore conventional logic. Conventional logic says you find your product concept inside yourself, or inside the market. Not true! You must look inside the prospects mind. Develop an outside-in approach, and get rid of your inside-out one.

Positioning: The Battle For Your Mind is a book written by Al Ries and Jack Trout. This book defined a new approach to communication, and may have defined the new era of marketing called “Positioning”. This is a book is as much about marketing as it is human psychology.