Gary Halbert once said at a seminar, “If I offer to set you up in the fast food business with a hamburger joint, and you can have any one special advantage you want, what will it be? A clown? Special sauce? Great burgers? A big ad budget?”
This is the point where the audience was shouting out their answers. I don’t know if anyone got the answer right, though.
Did you? What special advantage would you want?
Gary’s answer was, “A starving crowd.”
If the people are starving, and you’re there with burgers, do you really need any of those other things?
Look at a roach coach – those food wagons that come around to factory parking lots, special events and so forth. Their food is often bad, overpriced and unhealthy. Yet they get swarms of eager customers. Why? Because they go where the starving crowds are.
What is a “starving crowd?”
It might be people with a pressing problem, like a certain health crisis or being overweight.
It could be a market in the midst of change and upheaval, with people looking for answers and help. Health care and insurance in the U.S. might fit this category, since the rules keep changing.
It could be a market in pain, like retail stores trying to survive against internet shopping.
It could simply be people who are hyper-passionate about their particular interest, such as horses, or golf, or investing.
Ideally, you want either one of these starving crowds:
1. A group of buyers with an aggravation that gives them sleepless nights, anxiety, ulcers, rage and so forth, where you can solve their problem or provide something to help. For example, tax problems, health problems, childcare problems and so forth.
2. Or a burning desire for something you can provide. For example, a way to make money, better a golf score, achieve a high mark on an entrance exam, etc.
The two categories can, of course, overlap, which is even better. Worrying about bills or hating a job overlaps with making money from the internet.
Your goal as a marketer is to identify one of these markets and build the right offer for what that market wants right NOW, versus developing an offer and then figuring out who might want to buy it from you.
Yes, I know you might have heard a version of this before, but it’s so crucial to your success, that it bears repeating time and time again.
Choose your market, find out what they want to buy today, and offer them exactly that. When you do, your marketing is already halfway done.
