Ice Cube Marketing

Amidst the sea of changes, one thing remains—one that few people understand, even today

This is why the National Advertisers Association estimated that 75% of digital media investment, or $20bil is squandered

Few people truly understand that the other side of a digital campaign is people We are marketing to real people, not Google, not Facebook or Instagram

While trying to game the algorithm or apply the latest SEO hack, marketers miss out on one crucial thing

Their ads make people feel ignorant.

First, the tone of their ad makes people feel ignorant.

A lot of digital marketers are taught to use pain or problem to get people to sign up It’s true that people respond better to negative emotions because humans are loss averse (Daniel Kahneman, 1979) There’s nothing wrong with using pain or problem

However, the issue is when you do a pain-based ad, the tone is condescending Let me give you an example- Tuition industry

Most of the time, the painpoint for tuition business is “poor results in school” and marketers will mostly try to leverage this angle to promote their tuition service

Shown below is a typical Facebook ad speaking to parents It may get lots of traffic and clicks but has no leads Why? Without knowing, the advertiser is insinuating that firstly, 1)The child is not smart enough to figure it out on his own Secondly, 2)The parent is also not smart because she has wasted thousands of dollars as well her kid’s time with no results

When your ad implies that the child is stupid and needs tuition, you will not generate any leads because no one thinks their child is stupid

Sure, you try to dig into the pain and use negative emotions to trigger the need for tuition but the ad will not convert, even if parents feel the pain

The reason as you might have guessed, is that the ad breaks rapport

Would you buy from someone who implies that you are stupid? No, you must know, like and trust a business in order to buy from them

This is the rule of conversion optimization and marketing

It may be true that your target audience has spent a lot of budget and have not gotten results but you don’t want to condemn people for this

This is what you should do instead- tell them it is not their fault

“It is not your fault that your experience has not managed to produce results so far Every center claims that they have the best tuition Your child has potential but it is not being unleashed because tuition centers have the one-size-fits-all approach ” Something to that effect

This is what politicians do, isn’t it? They say that it is not your fault that you cannot get a job; it is not your fault that you have to send out so many resumes with no replies It is the education system’s fault

Do you see what the politicians are doing?  When you tell people its not their fault, it shows empathy and creates the likeability As marketers, we also have to know what kind of underlying message we convey when we say something

2nd way they make people feel ignorant is they use fluff

A lot of marketers use fluff in their marketing They put in big words to sound impressive but there is no basis

If you use strong words such as “revolutionary product”, you need to be able to back it up If you keep making empty claims, you lose trust Your target audience tends to filter whatever you say

Consumers are very well-educated these days They can see through poor arguments and fluff and gimmicks

Marketers need to up their game and be well researched There must be stats and studies to back up the claims

On top of that, your explanation has to be logical, else people can see through the gap and call BS on your business