It is easy to understand a person who is driven by their passions.

Your passions take you to your happy place.

I have friends who have a passion for sporting events on television. Others have a passion for gambling, and the paripatetic have a passion for traveling to all the far-flung places on this spinning rock we live upon.

People who have a passion for achievement live to make things different.

Planning and research puts a candle to the wick of some people. They go without sleep and burn bright throughout the night as they gather, collate, and organize information that will set the future on fire.

Your scars are the memories of bitter experiences.

The pain is gone, but the benefits of those experiences remain. Your scars help you see danger on the horizon.

Your scars are the diplomas of lessons you will never forget.

It is good to have scars.

But wounds… wounds are different.

The pain remains and it triggers you to act in ways that everyone notices but no one understands. Sometimes not even you.

I have known men whose only passion was to seduce every woman they encountered. Those men like to believe that they are “in love with falling in love.” But when you have known them long enough you will see a knife wound in their chest that has never healed. Way back in the long ago, they had a wife who began sleeping with another man. And ever since that day, they have been trying to become that man.

The pain of a wound is a powerful thing. It shouts, “Never again! Never again! Never again!”

I don’t believe that any of those men have ever figured out why they feel driven to become the living embodiment of the imaginary Don Juan, and I have never felt that it was my place to tell them.

Every person is formed by their passions, scars, and wounds. Even imaginary people.

All of the famous characters in literature were created from their passions, scars, and wounds.

Novelists, playwrights, and screenwriters know this. Ad writers do not. This is why most advertising is dull, dead, and untwitching.

When an ad writer is guided by the ambitions, demands, and expectations of their clients, you can expect to hear the glorious trumpets of a ringing call to action. “Come! Come now! Give me your money! Hurry! Hurry! I want your money Today! Today! Today! Act now! Don’t delay!”

We are not enchanted by these ads.

Did it ever occur to you that every successful brand is a character that lives in the mind of the customer?

A successful brand is driven by its passions, scars, and wounds.

Passion: Why does this brand exist? What is it chasing? What love does it represent?

Scars: What does it know? What has it learned? Why can I trust this brand?

Wounds: What is this brand trying to erase from the earth?

To what does it shout, “Never again! Never again! Never again!”

Roy H. Williams

A tribe is a group of people that share an identity marker. Every affinity group, every fan club, every self-selected group of insiders is a tribe.

Last week we talked about Business-to-Business advertising (B2B) and Niche Marketing with a long purchase cycle (Niche-L).

Today we talk about Niche Marketing with a short purchase cycle (Niche-S) and Business-to-Consumer advertising (B2C).

Let’s talk first about (Niche-S):

Niche Marketing with a Short purchase cycle will always be targeted to an affinity group. A Niche market is any self-selected group of insiders that has chosen to spend time, attention, and money on something that most people don’t care about.

Short-cycle Niche Marketing is mostly consumable products and services that are purchased on a regular basis by a self-selected group. Some examples of this would be bullets, fish hooks, tubes of oil paint, and those little cloth foot coverings worn by medical professionals in hospitals and air conditioning technicians in your home.

Niche Marketing with a Short purchase cycle is similar to B2B advertising: Features. Benefits. Price.

Now let’s talk about Business-to-Consumer advertising with a Short purchase cycle. (B2C-S)

Do you sell a small-ticket consumable product or service that a high percentage of the population will purchase regularly? You are selling Business-to-Consumer with a Short purchase cycle. Food, gasoline, and entertainment compose the majority of this category.

If you own a grocery store, a restaurant, a convenience store, a gas station, a hardware store, or an “everything” store that competes with Amazon and Wal-Mart, all you need is a high-visibility location, legendary signage, and a staff that delivers a positive customer experience. That’s it. That’s your advertising.

NOTE: If you want to drive immediate traffic, you will need

(1.) an irresistible offer

(2.) credible urgency

(3.) high-frequency repetition

If your ad doesn’t drive traffic,

(1.) your offer was weak

(2.) your urgency was not credible, or

(3.) you didn’t pound the drums loud enough

Now let’s talk about Business-to-Consumer advertising with a Long purchase cycle. (B2C-L)

If you sell a big-ticket product or service that a lot of Americans will buy “someday,” but only a fraction of one percent of the public is looking for it “today,” then you are in a B2C category with a Long purchase cycle.

This category requires patience, commitment, and mass media: primarily broadcast radio, broadcast television, or billboards.

You can use short-term-impact Transactional ads or long-term brand-building Relational ads.

The objective of a Transactional ad is to make the sale. You can measure the Return-On-Ad-Spend (ROAS) of short-term-impact Transactional ads because they offer no long-term benefits.

The objective of a long-term Relational ad is to create connection, relationship, and trust in your brand. Relational ads cannot be measured with ROAS because there is no moment when the benefits of relationship strengthening have been exhausted.

Business people are instinctively attracted to Transactional ads because Transactional ads are more easily measured. This feels good in the short term, but in the long term it leads to frustration as you ask, “Why aren’t we growing like we should?”

Now let’s talk about Business-to-Consumer advertising with a Mixed purchase cycle....

Today we’re going to do something fun. Are you ready?

(Press the PLAY button to hear the audio version of today’s memo.)

I will tell you how to advertise if you will tell me the nature of your business.

Advertising can be broken into 6 major categories:

1. Business-to-Business (B2B)
2. Niche Marketing (Niche-S) with a short purchase cycle
3. Niche Marketing (Niche-L) with a long purchase cycle
4. Short Purchase Cycle (B2C-Short) Business-to-Consumer
5. Long Purchase Cycle (B2C-Long) Business-to-Consumer
6. Mixed Purchase Cycle (B2C-Mixed) Business-to-Consumer

Business to Business.

B2B: If you are in a business that sells to other businesses, tight targeting will be essential to your success, but you can easily identify the customers you need to target.

Their addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses are readily available and direct mail, phone calls and emails are cheap. If you have some extra dollars, you can place ads in the appropriate trade magazines and websites to elevate your brand.

Features, benefits, pricing, delivery, and payment terms are important elements within your message. How well your B2B ad campaign works will depend entirely on what you say.

It will depend on what you say.

Focus on saying the right things.

Now let’s talk about Niche Marketing with a Long Purchase Cycle.

Niche-L: If you sell a specialty product that appeals to an affinity group, social media is a powerful thing. A powerful thing.

Danny sells the most rare, weird, exotic, and inexplicable guns the world has ever known. Firearms collectors are an affinity group. Collectible firearms are a Niche Market with a long purchase cycle.

Danny will soon be producing a new daily short and posting it on YouTube 365 days a year. Each short video will be Danny showing you a different gun and telling you the story behind it. He is not going to shoot the gun. He is just going to tell you its story.

Danny doesn’t need to find gun collectors. Gun collectors will find him. YouTube is the world’s second-largest search engine. Danny just needs to produce interesting content.

Brian Brushwood taught me that.

Would you like to have an invisible garage door like the one that Batman passes through to enter the Bat Cave?

Max can do that for you.

But invisible garage doors can only be installed in houses that have no masonry. Max needs to locate charming houses with wooden exteriors.

He can knock on their doors, leave a door-hanger, or mail them a glorious postcard. Max sells garage doors to a Niche Market with a long purchase cycle.

Do you sell an intangible Niche product with a long purchase cycle?

Are you a sales trainer, an ad writer, a nutritional expert, a motivational speaker, a psychic healer, an entertainer?

Build fame. Ride the tidal wave of fame. Fame leads to word-of-mouth. Be remarkable. Advertising is a tax you pay for not being remarkable.

Be remarkable.

Next week we’ll talk about Short Purchase Cycle Niche Marketing and B2C.

We’ll talk about B2C.

You and me.

Roy H. Williams

PS – When you have achieved a little bit of fame, make yourself easy to find by paying Google for the click whenever someone types your name into the search bar. But that’s not advertising. That’s just helping people find you when they are looking for you by name.

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