Marketing Bookshelf
Made to Stick
By Sarah Zane
Launching and running a successful business takes luck, skill and ambition. Perhaps most importantly, though, it takes lots of great ideas. Business owners need to dream up memorable marketing campaigns, determine the best way to expand their line of products or services and set up an eye-catching website. It’s all about dreaming up fantastic ideas and making them happen. But why do some ideas take hold while others fade away almost as soon as they’re conceptualized?
In Made to Stick, brothers Chip and Dan Heath show business owners how to dream up incredible ideas that will stick. These are the six key elements that all effective, enduring ideas have in common:
- Simplicity. Ideas should be simple, clear and relatable. When dreaming up new ideas for your credit union, keep it concise to keep it easy to bring to fruition.
- Unexpected. In a well-delivered joke, the unexpected punchline at the end sticks in the listener’s mind. To grab people’s attention, ideas should be unexpected. If your members don’t see the conclusion of your marketing gimmick or your content coming, they’ll remember it forever.
- Concrete. Statistics sound impressive, but people remember concrete ideas. The book brings the example of two activists trying to raise awareness about children who are dying of inadequate rehydration following bouts of diarrhea. One speaker talks about the 1.5 million children tragically lost each year due to dehydration. Another speaker shows the crowd a packet of salt and a packet of sugar, claiming that the cost of these packets can help save a child’s life. While the first speaker’s numbers may be impressive, the second speaker gives the crowd an easy, concrete way to help. When your credit union decides to get behind a cause or to raise awareness on a financial matter, give your members a concrete step they can take to help them remember your ideas.
- Credible. For ideas to stick, they need to be credible. Boost your idea’s credibility by having someone externally credible endorse it, or by generating your own credibility by using strong details and incontestable facts. As a credit union, this can mean quoting a renowned financial expert when sharing new information.
- Emotional. Playing on the collective emotions of the public is essentially what fuels the entertainment industry, but every business can use emotion to drive a point home. Don’t be afraid to appeal to your members’ emotions when sharing new content or marketing a new product.
- Stories. Everyone remembers a good story. Stories inspire action, identification and empathy, all of which generate customer loyalty. Sprinkle your content and your marketing efforts with short anecdotes to make your message stick in your members’ minds.
