🥇3 Principles For Being The Favourite
Being the best in your category is insanely hard. The alternative is being the favourite choice.
Hey friends, it’s Samuel! 👋
Or Sam if we know each other.
Welcome to my weekly newsletter where I share bite-sized doses of marketing goodness for marketing people.
Today’s topic — becoming your people’s favourite choice.
8.25 seconds.
That’s the average attention span of humans in 2022.
It’s hard to stand out.
There are two main problems that brands need to solve:
The problem of attention — “How do I make noise in a noisy world?”
The problem of changing minds — “How do I convince people to buy my product?”
Those are hard problems to solve.
Because (a) attention is hard to grab and (b) minds are hard to change.
In the past, claiming to be ‘better’ was a good way to stand out.
As technology improves, the next iteration was indeed better.
But if you look around at most marketing today, ‘better’ is everywhere:
A better task manager
A better note taking app
A better social media tool
Claiming that your brand is ‘better’ is no longer effective because people’s minds are hard to change.
It’s hard to convince someone that you’ve got something better when better is subjective.
Know what I mean?
So you end up with two choices to stand out:
Be the First (category creation)
Be the Favourite (creating superfans)
For most brands — especially newcomers, trying to become the best in category is insanely hard.
It’s better to choose to be the favourite choice. 😉
🥇 The benefit of being the Favourite
I’ve often said that marketing is simple:
Marketing is all about finding your people.
People who ..trust you, buy from you and stay with you.
But if your people choose you as their favourites, it takes it a notch further.
They are people who.. love you, buy (again) from you and sell for you
When you aim to market to these people, you shift from being ‘the best’ to positioning yourself as the ‘favourite choice’.
Being the favourite simply means:
In a sea of sameness, customers still chose you
You move being being liked to being loved
You create advocates and evangelists
It's hard to change the minds of your prospects.
So you have to position yourself differently.
❤️ 3 Principles for Being the Favourite
The science behind preferences and personal choices is hard to decipher.
it’s hardly an exact science.
But we can make some observations and inferences.
Here are the 3 Principles of Being The Favourite:
The Principle of Life-Change. You stand a better chance of being the favourite choice if you change someone’s life. YouTube for example, can be said as life-changing for dozens and hundreds of people who now make money online.
The Principle of Language. You feel me, you know me, you speak for me. This is probably something true for artists like Taylor Swift who has droves of raving fans.
The Principle of Likeness. If you’re brand or product evokes the same feelings from other favourite brands, you’ll likely stand out to be the favourite. For e.g. Stranger Things is insanely popular because it strikes the nostalgia chord over its fanbase.
Of course, you’re likely not going to becoming the favourite choice for the entire stadium of people.
Choose the customers to serve.
How do you become their favourite choice?
📝 SUMMARY — 3 Principles for Being the Favourite
The challenges of marketing today:
The problem of attention makes it hard to stand out
The problem of convincing people is because minds are hard to change
Instead, focus on being the favourite.
Finding the people who:
Love you
Buy (again) from you
Sell for you
The 3 Principles of Being The Favourite
Principle of Life-Change
Principle of Language
Principle of Likeness
Do you agree? What else did you think I missed?
Hope you enjoyed this week’s newsletter. Subscribe or share it.
Til next week,
Samuel
☕️ The Good Stuff
Pull yourself a shot and grab a mug. Let’s dive in to this weeks’ good stuff.
🐦 TWEET THREAD — Turning bugs into features is a cool thread by Wes Kao on how positioning can help you own you narrative. This perfectly illustrates how you can nail the favourite choice positioning.
📝 BOOK I’M READING — Snow Leopard. Nicolas Cole has been someone I’ve been following for a while now and his latest book is about creating content that stands out. I’ve long believed that content helps you become your people’s favourite choice, so I can’t wait to consume this.
📝 ARTICLE - 1,000 true fans. The original article by Kevin Kelly that started it all.
🎙 PODCAST - Making a marketing strategy from scratch. Word of mouth is one of the best channels for referrals. I quite enjoyed this conversation with Joana Galvao and Chris Do from The Futur Podcast on how she made it into a strategy.
🖊 Quote of the Week
You don’t have to be the best, you just have to be the favourite.