Marketing Foreplay

Marketing by Teasing Your Target Audience
(Photo by Aimee Plesa)

How direct is your marketing message? For B2B (business-to-business) marketing, it generally needs to be fact-based (and data-driven), for example: Our solution to this problem often produces a 50% improvement in bottom line-revenue. For some B2C (business-to-consumer) services (soft skills – like coaching – for example),  producing a fact-based message is difficult (you likely don’t have case studies proving the effectiveness of your work). What can you do instead?

Tease your audience with information. If you’ve ever signed up for a free webinar or teleseminar, you’ve likely experienced this marketing technique. Instead of getting to the “good stuff” immediately, the presenter spends a lot of time showcasing their credentials: awards won, articles published, celebrity clients, books written, large seminars taught, etc.  Ten minutes has gone by. They then tell stories of the amazing successes of their past students. Twenty minutes has gone by. You’re wondering if they’ll ever share any of their techniques with you.

At thirty minutes, they then tell you that they’re about to tell you about one of their amazing “secret” techniques, and then describe how important it will be for your life. And finally, at thirty-five minutes, they share the secret.

What’s the impact to their audience? For those that have stuck through the preamble, it’s a cool drink of water to the parched audience. They revere the information. They worked for it (waiting until it was revealed) and know that the value of the presenter’s (with world-class qualifications) time is high.

Now imagine instead, that the speaker simply began the presentation simply, with a minimal preamble, and then shared the secret. Your perceived value would be much lower (even though the information is the same). The key is that through extended foreplay, your desire is heightened.

For your next marketing campaign, consider if increasing the “tease” will result in more closed deals with your target audience.

One thought on “Marketing Foreplay

  1. Nice One!
    I’m gonna tell you what I’m gonna tell you…tease, tease
    Then, I’m gonna tell you…
    Then, I’m gonna tell you what I told you.

    The late GREAT Guitar Player Tommy Bolin, had an amazing rockin’ hit called “Teaser”. If you like rockin’ guitar…and one-awesome-drum solo…you’ll love it.

    Keep it up JH-R

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.