This post corresponds to Audio Blog 2 which you can listen to here.

Can you tell me why some marketing ideas survive (and thrive) while others die? If not, you’re probably wasting time and money with your marketing. Instead, you should read the brilliant book Made to Stick. Here’s my Cliff’s Notes summary of it.

Made to Stick reveals Six Principles of messages that work:

1. Simplicity: Stress one point. Period.
2. Unexpectedness: Create a sense of mystery by taking your prospect on an unexpected journey. “Naturally sticky ideas are frequently unexpected,” Chip and Dan Heath explain. In fact, common sense is the enemy of good marketing. “Surprise makes us pay attention and think, makes us want to find an answer to resolve the question of why we were surprised. Surprise must be coupled with insight, and must be post-dictable (a twist that makes sense after you think about it but wouldn’t have seen it coming).
3. Concreteness: Eliminate abstraction. People are far better at remembering concrete things.
4. Credibility: Build credibility through the use of specific details like statistics and context. Use ‘testable credentials’ like ‘try before you buy.’
5. Emotions: “The right stories make people act by providing stimulation and inspiration. The most basic way to make people care is to form an association between something they don’t yet care about and something they do care about.”
6. Stories: Include several kinds of plots and various story lines, using metaphors as an easy way to relate things that are usually difficult to identify with. But don’t do what Tommy Boy did:

Here’s the Made to Stick process for making ideas stickier:

1. Find the core of your message. Eliminate everything else.
2. Identify the unexpected implications: what’s counter intuitive?
3. Communicate the message in a way that breaks the audience’s guessing machine along counterintuitive dimensions.
4. When the guessing machine fails, help them redefine it.

Most importantly: When we know something, we fall into the trap of imagining that other people know it too. This is called The Curse of Knowledge. An example would be me rambling on about Twitter tools while you were still wondering “What’s Twitter?” When we use expert level thinking with non-experts, our messages are certain to miss. The key is to find a ‘universal language.’

If you have trouble getting there, you’ll probably find some clarity by asking ‘why?’ three times as you write your marketing copy. If you get stuck, drop into our members’ forum and ask for some help!