These articles are written to be equally useful for the beginner of NLP and the NLP Trainer although some of the articles may be more advanced than others. If you find yourself reading an article that’s too advanced, give us a call or send us an email. We will be happy to clarify the issue for you.
Marketing Tricks: Article No. 02
While researching our Marketing For NLP Training, Tad and I spent some time looking at various opinions about marketing and advertising, and also at the issue of covert network marketing business and covert advertising.
In a paper entitled The Stealth Influence of Covert Marketing and Much Ado About What May Be Nothing, Herbert Jack Rotfeld points out interesting arguments regarding Covert Marketing.
“Most discussions of covert marketing stem from three basic statements:
- People are generally skeptical of any business-provided sources of information, so publicity or even random endorsements by strangers on the street might provide consumers with more persuasive sales messages;
- Advertising creators repeatedly say that they need to “break out” from the increasingly cluttered mass media environment; and
- News reports of any pervasive marketing activity include a direct assertion, or at least an implicit presumption, that business managers do it because they know it “works.”
Management decisions to use any covert marketing tactic are driven by the first two beliefs, and public policy worries of its improper or deceptive influence on consumers flow from the third. However, most covert marketing efforts are undertaken with professional uncertainty of whether anything really works as they create new areas of consumer skepticism and even more commercial clutter.”
It is an article worth reading since the author discusses different aspects and demystifies many of the myths around subliminal and covert marketing.
But what I personally liked in this article was the last paragraph.
“The people hired to wander around the public space trying to generate word-of-mouth buzz for their clients’ products might be hiding the sponsored nature of their efforts, but as with any other form of covert marketing, the existence of a hidden or unidentified sponsor is less important than whether the messages are true. In assessing the consumers’ interests, that is the real issue for covert marketing or any marketing tool.”
And here is the real issue. If you communicate something truthfully that works in consumer’s interest, your marketing will produce results.
Anyway, here is our second linguistic pattern of PR:
Pattern No. 2 – SIMULTANEOUS EVENTS – A goes with B, therefore A causes B
This is one technique from a group of illogical PR techniques really widely used today. Unfortunately many NLP Practitioners do not realize that linguistic patterns only have to be plausible – they don’t always have to be logical. Ponder a little about this!
When a PR person has a clearly defined goal, he or she can often use events, situations, what have you occurring or operating at the same time to either support something wanted or attack something unwanted.
Let’s say you want to present reasons for people taking an NLP coaching session with you. Using this pattern, you can make as many associations possible between your coaching services and various positive factors or trends in the community (prosperity, great relationships, children improved abilities at school, get rid of phobia, etc.). Have at least 20 different good factors or trends ready. Do not make up stuff; get real issues that can be verified.
Here are two examples:
In NLP – We offer 100% guaranteed support to all of our students which in turn is free coaching and guidance for life.
People are taught to think and believe that if a phobia of 20 years in effect it will take another 20 years to get rid of that phobia. This is not true with NLP & Time Line Therapy®.
In this statement we use the simultaneous 100% guaranteed support with free coaching and guidance for life.
Now, knowing this, first see if you can begin to notice the pattern being used. Search for it as you watch the news or read newspapers or internet webpages. Many people use it inadvertently… and that’s fine.
Then, the next step is to choose any policy, pricing policy, etc., you don’t like and link it with simultaneous events or situations that lead to negative associations.
(Example: if you oppose office love affairs, link that behavior with a concurrent increase in business problems due to that office people’s inability to relate clearly to either party involved in the affair)
Then the next step is to choose any policy you support, and using the same pattern, link it with positive associations.
Good luck!