Speaking The Right Marketing Language

Professor Donald Puglisi packed the house this week at the University of Delaware. His topic: “Rational Investing at a Time of Financial Crisis and Panic” He used words like “abysmal,” “anguish,” “pain and suffering,” and “bloodbath.” “More bad news is coming,” Puglisi warned. Who do you think attended this talk? What was their mentality? It was people who wanted to hear bad news. You? You’re going to ignore speaking about bad news if you know what’s good for your business.

Right now, you have a decision to make. What language do you want to speak?

Let’s assume that you want to keep your doors open for the next 12 months and have a profitable year. You have a choice to speak the language of barren or the language of lush. It’s the difference between despair and hope, scarcity and prosperity.

Barren Language
“It would be fruitless to try that in this tough economy” and “New projects would be unproductive during an economic crisis.” If you decide to speak the language of barren you will be speaking to a population with a scarcity mentality. You will be marketing to people who are afraid. People who don’t know what they should do. “Will I still have a job?” “What’s my retirement going to look like?”

People speaking barren are people frozen by inaction. “With all this uncertainty I better hold on to what I have.” A scarcity mentality results in removing oneself from the economy. The result is delay in making purchases until “things get better.” And spending a whole lot less on the few things that are purchased.

Lush Language
But not everyone is doing bad. Some people think positively and they are doing fine. These people speak the language of lush. “I’m looking for fresh ideas.” and “We need to act now because the economy is ripe with opportunity.”

People speaking lush are moving forward. They’re not throwing caution to the wind, but they know that you have to keep moving forward. You cannot shrink your way to success. They are willing to spend and invest to flourish.

Language Translation
Speaking the right language in your marketing is crucial. The language you speak is about two things: attraction and self-persuasion. Seth Godin says “If you persuade yourself and your friends that times are really tough and that you’re bound to fail, you’ll probably do the things you need to do to make that true in the long run.” In other words: you will be living a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But more importantly, your marketing language determines the population you attract: scarcity vs. prosperity. Andy Sernovitz says that if you stay positive, “People will flock to be with you.”
Resolve right now to speak a lush language of prosperity.

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