Chapter 4: Marketing Lessons from the Merchant and the Four D?ppelgangers

Note: If you didn't catch The Tale of the Merchant and the Four D?ppelgangers from the previous chapter, read that first before going forward with this analysis.

Key Takeaways from The Merchant and the Four D?ppelgangers

Kudos to that merchant for such a successful business trip!

Let's unpack what made the merchant successful with the last two brothers, what made him unsuccessful with the first two, and other takeaways from the story.

Setting the Stage

First, let's see what set the stage for his success. It might seem like obvious stuff, but it's super important for us to always keep it in mind when we're doing our own marketing, because often it's easier to see things from the outside than from the inside.

In a nutshell, here are the key elements of the setting:

• he had a clearly defined buyer persona—i.e., academics who write manuscripts (notice that he didn't go after the retired master of the house because, although an academic, the man wouldn't have had any need for ink since he wasn't writing new works)
• he went where his buyer persona was—i.e., the town renown for its scholars, and, more specifically, the house of the most illustrious scholars
• he spoke with each brother individually to tailor his sales message—in general, personalization increases your chances of success
• he had a good product

The last one goes without saying—if your product is bad, no matter how good your marketing is, making money will be a painful process. So I'll assume you have that covered, naturally ??

The key point is that he didn't randomly go after just anyone; he went to a specific place, to seek out a specific type of person, armed with a great product, a great plan, and a great offer.

We'll get to how you can get a great plan and a great offer in future chapters. For now, let's move on to the factors that determined his success (or lack thereof) with the four brothers.

The Four D?ppelgangers—Success and Failure

Did you notice that all four brothers were pretty much identical? They all looked the same, had the same profession, and, in other words, were all the merchant's target buyers. But why did the first and second brothers not buy, while the third and fourth did?

If you read the brothers' responses to the merchant carefully, you might have intuited the key takeaway. The fact is, while all four were the right person for the merchant to sell to, they were in different stages of their buyer's journey.

Here's the quick breakdown:

• the first brother was in the awareness stage—he didn't know about the inks, and he also didn't know about the problem
• the second brother was in the engagement stage—he didn't know about the inks, but he knew about the problem
• the third brother was in the consideration stage—he knew about the inks and he knew about the problem, but he was still in the window-shopping phase and he didn't have a pressing need yet
• the fourth brother was in the decision stage—he knew about the inks and the problem, and he had such a desperate need for them that he didn't even need to window-shop

Ah... now you see where this is going, don't you?

The Buyer's Journey and Your Ideal Client's Behavior (Light Version)

We're going to dive deeper into the technicalities of this in the next chapter when we introduce GBB Media's proprietary way of looking at your ideal buyer's journey (that we use and that we've found to be more accurate than conventional buyer's journey models), but here's an overview of how the buyer's journey affects your ideal client's behavior.

Your ideal client has a problem that you exactly solve. But the receptiveness of your client to your solution depends heavily on where they are in their buyer's journey:

• if they don't know they have a problem, they are very far from doing business with you (the first brother)
• if they know they have a problem but don't have a pressing need yet, they are closer to doing business with you, but probably not going to close quickly (the second and third brothers)
• if they know they have a problem and they have a very pressing need, they are the quickest and easiest to get to do business with you (the fourth brother)

Here's Why This Matters

As small businesses on our way to our first $1M, we have a limited budget, which means we need to make the most of our marketing and advertising. If you were an ink-selling merchant and you only had one day to spend in that town, and you knew in advance the needs and reactions of each of the four brothers, which brother would you go for?

Probably the fourth one, right?

When an ideal client is in the decision stage, they're the lowest-hanging fruit, and therefore the one that, if we go after, will give us the biggest bang for buck when we're starting out.

By contrast, when an ideal client is in the awareness stage, they're the highest-hanging fruit, and it will take a lot of time, effort, and trust-building to nurture them to the decision stage.

This was a quick analysis and view of how the buyer's journey stage can affect your ideal client, but I hope you can see how important this is. While often overlooked, it's important to remember the effect that the buyer's journey will have on your marketing efforts. You can have the ICP crystal-clear and be targeting the right person, but if you catch them at the wrong stage, you'll end up losing your entire budget before you make a sale (and then you'll think that marketing doesn't work).

Your ICP and the buyer's journey need to work together for your marketing efforts to fully succeed.

But how do you make this happen?

That's what we'll cover next chapter—we'll go into greater detail on the buyer's journey and how to figure out where an ideal client is on that journey so you can identify the right people to go after first.

See you there.

- Staff Writer at GBB Media

P.S. You may be wondering, did the merchant really fail with the first and second brothers? We'll also look at this question in the next chapter. The answer might surprise you ;)